I kept my senses wide open as I led my would-be accomplice through my gardens. We trailed through aisles of flowers and under winding trees that made shady arches over the pathways. At that time of day, with the sun high over our heads, Fergal should be making his patrol of Bri Leith’s inner halls. As long as we stayed outdoors and kept along the hill shaped roofs of Father’s manor, I could keep him from spotting Maya. We skirted around the sloping entrances to pit-like courtyards and round windows and skylights. It wasn’t until I spied the solitary rectangular slit in the lowest of the domes that I slowed our pace. Mother’s room.
My neck tingled where her delicate fingers had squeezed. The lingering memory made my stomach a bed of buzzing wasps. We drew closer to the narrow window and I withdrew my energy, muting it so Aunt Brigid would not detect me as easily.
Maya inhaled as if to say something.
I pressed a finger to my mouth.
She glanced around the nearby hills and swaying grasses. When she spoke next it was a soft whisper. “Does that mean we’re close?”
“Yes,” I replied, matching her tone. My traitorous heart beat harder against my breast and my feet became leaden for all they wanted to move. “From here we must take care not to draw notice or someone will find you.”
“What’s wrong?” Maya narrowed her eyes at my trembling hands.
“A tad late to be getting cold feet, isn’t it?” The idea seemed brilliant back in my room, too far away for the possible ramifications to dawn on me. What if Mother spotted me? Would she greet me with an eager smile or the same frantic rage like when she’d tried to kill me?
“There’s something you’re not telling me.”
“Only because it isn’t relevant.” I hid both hands behind my back and squeezed them together.
“That’s up to me, not you.”
“I could leave you out here, stranded and lost. It would be easy for anyone to catch you.” I closed the distance between us in one stride. “None would treat you nearly as kind as my sister or I.”
“Fine.” The maiden had the gall to shrug. “Good luck with that spell. I bet that king would love to know all about it.”
“You said it earlier. If you expose me, you risk yourself.”
“If I go down, you go with me.”
“I see my sister is rubbing off on you.” I withdrew from her intimate space and resumed our distance. “What is it you Americans call this kind of impasse, a Mexican standoff?”
“Nope. It’s me grabbing you by the short and curlies.”
“Colorful.” I winced at the painful images that conjured. “It really is nothing. The other human is always guarded by one of my family’s mightiest elders. There is no telling what she will do if she sees you.”
“And that’s the only reason you’re so twitchy?”
My throat tightened as the agitated yes I wanted to say caught. I gagged trying to force the word through. Why couldn’t I have inherited Mother’s capability to lie outright? “One of many,” I managed. “Come. We have tarried here too long. My father’s guard makes regular patrols and at this rate he will have circled back around by now.”
Maya peered over her shoulder at the empty hills sprawled behind us. When I started walking again, she trotted beside me without another complaint. Thank Danu.
We made it the rest of the way to Mother’s window. As we approached the gap, I knelt beside it and Maya copied me. The musty air filling that dank room wafted out and it made my nostrils flare. I used to bring Mother flowers to set by her bed so their perfume would override that smell and give the gray chamber more color. Then she realized the blossoms never wilted and it provoked her into a frenzy where she tore at them until the petals were strewn across her floor. Brigid gently turned away any other bouquets I attempted, saying they were better off at home in my garden than fodder for Mother’s fits.
“What now?” Maya continued to keep her voice low, even moreso than before, and nibbled on her worn thumbnail.
“Stay still.” I bent over her and leaned toward her ear so she would hear my own murmuring better. Then I cast a thin layer of glamour over the two of us. Power skirted over my skin as the illusion covered it, only enough to hide us from sight so as not to alert anyone’s extra senses. I would appear as naught but a stone and Maya would seem a mere mound of grass.
A shudder ran through Maya’s shoulders and she dug her fingers into the ground.
“What do you see?” I pointed down the hole where one could see into the whole of Mother’s quarters.
“If you want to know so bad, look.”
“One of us has to play sentry and watch for danger.” A convenient excuse. If I saw inside, I might forget all secrecy, peek through the glamour, and someone would notice me.
“Fine. There’s a couple redheads. The one sitting by the door is super tall and she’s playing with something shiny. Probably in her late twenties or early thirties. More on the orange side than your sister. She glows like you two.”
“That’s the guard.” Aunt Brigid keeping herself busy. “And the other?”
“She’s more of a dark strawberry blonde, about my age, so late teens, maybe younger. She’s kind of my height too. Is she the human?”
“Yes.” Anyone describing Mother at her best wouldn’t be so frugal with details. “What’s she doing?”
“Weaving or something. I don’t know.” Maya’s voice caught. “She doesn’t look too good.”
“Her name is Etain. My father took her, just as Riona stole you. She was a newly wedded queen among ancient Ireland’s people, rumored to be the most beautiful woman in the world. The Aos Si often covet those sorts of mortals like prizes. When they put it in their minds to have something they do anything to obtain it.”
“Sounds about right.”
“She has been here ever since and is now trapped in that room and guarded at all times.” I paused and surveyed the landscape around us. The long grasses made rolling waves with the balmy breeze. No far off figures stuck out above them, stomping their way across the green. Nothing disturbed their flow or divided them as something slinked through. “Her only access to the outside world is glimpsing through this slit, set too high to climb through.”
“He never lets her out?”
Not anymore. “Does that sound familiar?”
Maya shifted her weight from one hand to the other and rolled her wrists. Whatever thoughts she kept shuttered before showed as clear as if I had scried them myself. Panic and dread, her white-knuckled fingers curled into the grass and tearing at it. Perhaps I’d skewed the truth some for my own ends, but the reality of her predicament helped assuage my guilt. Maya’s situation had a few key differences to Mother’s and her fate would be far worse if Riona stayed as possessive as she seemed.
I spied over the edge ever so little. The grasses stayed clear of any disturbances. If Mother was at her loom, a short look shouldn’t distract her from that absolute focus. Aunt Brigid would stay occupied keeping watch on her charge and fiddling with whatever plaything she had brought. I could chance seeing how things were for myself.
Nothing could’ve prepared me.
In both her Aos Si and human lives, others had praised Mother’s beauty as the finest in either realm. She took great care maintaining that reputation and stuck to a set regimen from her childhood as a chieftain’s daughter. Our best talks came when I helped her comb her hair the requisite hundred strokes a day or accompanied her on the long walks she credited with preserving her physique. She insisted on a thrice a week washing and never dressed without consulting me on the effect a gown had. Father often complained she spent too much time on such “unnecessary frivolities.” But she quipped back his favorite saying: “a dull blade only kills the one who wields it.”
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Mother’s hair stuck out in so many disjointed tangles and her skin had a greasy sheen with the start of red blemishes. She wore only her baggy nightdress that hung heavy from her shoulders, not having bothered with her usual finery. The progress she’d made on the sky of her latest tapestry hung limp, a large gash torn through its middle. Mother toyed with those broken threads and took each end to tie them together in a series of mismatched knots. The piles of thread she had sorted strand by strand into their respective colors laid jumbled in a ball on the floor. Who had ruined her stunning work? Had it been Aunt Brigid, trying to dissuade a tantrum? Had it been Mother herself, taking out her grief on her art?
“Why won’t you let me go home?” Mother asked, her voice a nasal monotone. She turned to Brigid and the sunlight flashed off of fresh tear trails on her cheeks. “Has my husband not negotiated my ransom yet?”
“This is your home, dear. Your husband is the king over this hill.” Brigid set the glistening hunk of bronze in her lap, still shapeless as far as I could tell. “Are you done with your weaving today?”
“Yes.” Mother sighed, twisting away from the tapestry. “Everything is wrong, broken. Who ruined it?”
“It was my fault. I was not watching your dinner knife and you were very clever that day.” Brigid crossed the room to Mother’s copper wash pitcher. “If you’re finished, shall we wash your face?”
“Not now.” Mother stayed in her chair and her attention wandered away from Brigid to stare at the window.
We locked eyes. The cloudy stupor in hers cleared a moment, recognition registering.
Maya ducked back and tugged on my sleeve to do the same. I couldn’t as I hung on Mother’s reaction. Would she ask for me, say my name, or even smile a little with delight? Could she spare me her ire long enough for that small comfort?
“Someone’s watching.” Mother recoiled and pointed an accusatory finger at the ledge, at me. “You’re one of Midir’s spies, aren’t you? I want nothing to do with your master. I want to see my family again, my daughter. Tell him to take me back home, please!”
Aunt Brigid spun toward the slit.
I pressed my belly to the grass and withdrew back into my glamour. The burning in my eyes from lack of sleep intensified with fresh, gathering tears. I swiped at them. We had no time for such indulgences. Maya had seen my “proof.” Mother’s condition could only help my cause. Mother wouldn’t have to endure it for much longer, though, so long as Maya agreed.
“We have lingered too long.” I crawled away from the window, staying low so neither Brigid nor Mother could catch sight of my flight.
Maya only nodded as she clambered arm over arm after me. Her manner stayed measured. The mask of pensive bravado left her resembling an overcast gathering of clouds, likely to storm as much as hover.
I concealed our tracks as we went, sending my power into the long stalks of grass we pressed against so they bounced upright behind us. Soon we reached a point far enough away where Brigid and Mother wouldn’t spot us if we rose.
“This should be a good distance.” I paused and lifted myself to kneel. Maya became lost among the stalks.
“What is my little lord doing?” The grass shifted, curling inward as sage colored coils as thick as a string of wine casks twisted around us.
I cried out as I scrambled on top of Maya and wrapped my glamour about her. She clapped her hand over her mouth, muffling a yelp. All anyone should see would be a pile of tall grass I laid upon. If the giant snake happened to brush against said grass, that would raise a whole new set of questions. Why does the grass feel like flesh, little Daire? Why does it whimper when I squeeze it?
“Fergal.” I grabbed my pounding chest and adjusted my tongue from speaking in Maya’s English to the Aos Si’s language. “Isn’t it early for you to be wandering by here?”
“I adjusted my route to give this area an extra sweep.” An oblong snake head rose over me, its pale green eyes unblinking and shiny black pupils narrowed to slits. Fergal shrank and shaped himself into a fair Aos Si man with near white hair, towering above me from where I sat. The diamond shaped scales with their deep brown rows of spots became a cloak hung about his shoulders. A silver brooch in the shape of a serpent chasing its own tail pinned it in place. He was the only one of Father’s personal guard to live through the sealing of Tir Na Nog. That survivor’s guilt drove him to take his duties as my personal stalker far too seriously. “Orders from King Midir, in case you came lurking.”
“I am no threat to her. He knows that.”
“True. Besides, Queen Brigid protects Lady Etain well enough.” Fergal added a cheery cadence to his words as if I were still a child that needed his coddling. “It is not for her safety, little lord, but yours.”
“She’s hardly dangerous.” My shoulders slumped, the sight of Mother’s neglected state biting fresh. “It seems like she’s not even bothering to take care of herself.”
“The king told me about that incident when you visited her last. She may not have started out a threat, but you saw yourself how bad her condition is.” He patted my head in an all too familiar gesture. I had complained about it before, but he’d only chuckled and commented how I would miss it if he stopped. “She is only human, now. That’s the natural course their limited forms take. We can only prolong it for so long.”
“They have made substantial leaps of their own over the years. Some live beyond a century without any magic. Without our intervention.”
“They also used that cleverness to slaughter most of our kind.” Fergal knelt, stern gaze meeting mine in warning. “Careful not to let your fantasizing about mortals corrupt your wits, lest that blood corrupt you like it did Lady Etain.”
Maya rammed her elbow into my leg. So she hadn’t lost all feeling in her limbs yet.
“Duly noted.” I cast him a smile that hardly touched my cheeks and wiggled my fingers in farewell. “Do get back to your duties then and I’ll be on my way.”
“To where?”
“Either my room or my gardens. I haven’t decided yet. I won’t disturb the Lady Etain. I’ve had my fill for the day.”
“Be sure I don’t catch you again.” Apparently satisfied, Fergal rose and and trekked away along his route. I lingered until he rounded Mother’s window and disappeared behind that hill.
Maya wheezed.
“All clear.” I scooted off and crossed my legs.
“Took you long enough to get rid of him.” She sneezed and rubbed her nose as she sat up.
“Convincing performances are never rushed.”
“Yeah right.” She braced the small of her back as she stretched it. Her vertebrae emitted one sudden crack rather than a gradual series of them. “Next time hurry it up. You’re heavier than you look.”
“There will be a next time?” Hope swelled in my chest.
“Only if you’re straight with me.” She slumped over her knees. “No more games, alright?”
“I make no promises.”
“Whatever.” She indulged a roll of her eyes before squaring them on me. “Your sister doesn’t like you and I can see why. She’s got a hole in the ground while you’ve got the rich family, all this property, and all the time in the world. But from everything you’ve told me, if you go against the Bodb guy, you’ll lose it. Why do you still want to do this spell?”
“That hardly touches the surface of my sister’s resentment.”
“Not the point.”
“I thought you said you didn’t care about my motives.”
“You’re stalling.”
“What does it matter?” I picked at the nearest grass stalk and curled it around my finger. “It’s a simple arrangement. You help me, I help you. Why complicate matters?”
“Because I need everything in the open, no secrets.”
“Very well, if you must be difficult.” I jerked my chin toward Mother’s quarters. “That woman and I are in similar predicaments. She is trapped in that room, unable to leave because my father values her. I am trapped in my own home because my family values my power. If I free myself of the High King’s authority, then I can save myself and escape to the mortal realm.”
“I said no secrets.” Maya leaned closer, crowding me. “That lady’s your mom, isn’t she?”
“How did you—”
“It wasn’t hard to figure out. Besides, You two look alike in the face.” She tapped her own eyes, her own nose, features of mine most commonly compared to Mother’s. Her finger settled on her forehead. “And you wrinkle up here when you’re mad. Nobody else here does.”
“Either you’re more observant than I gave you credit for or lack of sleep is making me careless.” Heat flooded my cheeks as I rubbed my still sore eyes. “That doesn’t make anything I said any less true.”
“What’s going on with her? Why aren’t you allowed to see her?”
“She has been here so long that her mind isn’t quite what it used to be, so she has these episodes where she loses herself. Sometimes she forgets things, other times she becomes hostile and attacks her caregivers…me included.” I tied that stray blade of grass I’d been toying with into a knot. “When I was younger, she was of her right mind more often than not. Recently she hasn’t been herself more often. Father has convinced himself that the best thing for everyone is to keep her secluded and sedate at all times. No more visitors, no more attacks.”
“And what about when you leave?” Maya’s eyebrows crinkled together. “Are you going to leave her here?”
“I intend to take her with me.” I tossed the crumpled grass aside. “If modern medical technology cannot help her be well again, then it can at least improve her quality of life until she does pass on.”
“Then what?”
“I’d rather not think that far ahead just yet. Odds are against me making it that far as it is.”
Maya went quiet, her mouth bending into a pensive frown. Did her thinking favor me? What must her inner debate be arguing? Her brightly dyed hair and the silver piercings she wore matched her defiant personality. Yet her monotone garb suggested someone who kept her head down, another automaton lost to a daily grind. The former could work in my favor, wanting to take control of her helpless situation. The latter would side with resigned adaptation, mourning her old life but preferring guaranteed survival over such uncertainty. Were those contradictions why Riona seemed to cling to her? Would those dueling sides help my cause or hurt it?
“Fine. You’ve sold me.” Maya stood while wiping off stray grass and seeds clinging to her trousers. “I’ll help you.”
“It’s a deal!” I lit up, bolting to my feet and capturing both her hands in mine. “You help me gain control of my power and I will take you back to the mortal realm, to your true home.”
“Let’s not get too touchy.” She slipped her fingers from my grasp. “Remember, this is business.”
“Of course.” After all, our road ahead was bound to have enough twists and turns to make us dizzy. Everything involving the Aos Si never followed a straight line. If we were to follow it to the end, we had to keep our heads, no matter the perils. “Just business.”