I held my small ivy mirror in front of me, pacing about my Spring section by the small trench I had dug among the crocuses. The enchantment I’d placed on Maya’s mirror would tell me when she had the Sword in hand. Nuada’s Sword of Light was rumored to give battle frenzy to its wielder. I’d assumed it wouldn’t find Maya enough of a warrior for that gift, so I hadn’t mentioned that. But it might be hungry for battle like Lugh’s Spear. My accomplice had a capable mind, but would that be enough to outwit two accomplished Aos Si queens and their entourage of death heralds? She’d told me to trust her to handle the Bean Sidhe after I gave her the detection spell. Worry gnawed at me all the same as I waited.
The glass flashed gold. Relief flooded me as I drove the power I’d conserved into making a portal.
The reflection in it shifted to a blinding array of white light driving away all other color. Maya’s shape hoisted the Sword of Light high with its hilt’s eyes ready for battle. I motioned her toward me, prompting her to pass the Sword through before it overwhelmed her and exposed our ruse.
She thrust the blazing brand at me.
I swiveled aside as the Sword pierced through my mirror and flew into the crocuses. It cut a coal-black swath past the hole I’d prepared and through the purple and yellow flowers. The panicked shrieks of their blossoms rang between my ears.
I swayed on my feet as I shut the portal and the drain on my magic caught up. There would be no dealing with the garden’s fears until I had rested with how the sweat dribbled from my cheeks and my knees wavered. I gingerly padded around the blackened carnage of a poor patch of poppies the Sword had stopped in and scooped handfuls of soil over the blade.
“Something’s made a right mess of your handiwork,” came Uncle Aengus’ voice, ripe with withheld laughter.
“I was fixing it.” I put my back to the Sword and sat in the way of my uncle seeing it. He might not sense the Sword yet with my power flowing so thick around it. I leaned against the dirt and massaged it, coaxing the flowers into growing over the Sword. New cold sweat broke out under my tunic. “What brings you?”
“Usually you greet me with a hug first, then the tide of questions.” Aengus walked one foot in front of the other along the original line I’d dug as if demonstrating some great feat of balance. He stooped in front of me and propped his elbows upon his knees. “Do you need any help patching everything up? I imagine the little ones are rather frightened.” He picked up the burnt stem of one of the Sword’s victims and rubbed it between his fingers. “Something scorched them, did it?”
“I don’t need your help.” What little remained of my energy trickled more than surged through the delicate roots of the flowers, urging them to move. “These poppies can be more timid than the rest of the lot. Wouldn’t want to risk them becoming skittish with the introduction of a foreign power.”
“You always forget whose power flows through all of Midhe’s soil every day, my young apprentice.” Aengus winked and scribbled a few Ogham lines into the dirt. The tiny red flowers lashed around my legs and thickened over my lower body, much like one of Mother’s tapestries. Always the prankster, my uncle.
“And you can never resist the opportunity to show off, can you?” I wriggled under the stems, oddly strong for such a dainty species. “You’ve had your fun. Let me out of this.”
“I haven’t seen or heard from you since Finvarra’s party.” Aengus mimicked my cross-legged stance. “Have you been dallying anymore with Riona’s changeling?”
“Not quite dallying.” I gave up wriggling and slouched forward. “I’ve been focusing on a private project. I wanted to show you when I finished.”
“Hence the mess?” He pointed to the seared earth under his legs.
“Precisely.” I grinned, relieved he didn’t try to pry further as others might. “A part of it went awry earlier. It’s nothing I can’t salvage.”
“Has Etain been well since Midir left?” His smile drooped some. “It’s always hard seeing her like that, knowing how she used to be.”
“Come see her yourself,” I said, letting myself become caught up in the conversation. So long as he didn’t seem to notice the Sword’s presence, I could indulge a friendly chat. “She has roamed the grounds with Aunt Brigid since Father left.”
“He won’t give me one of his legendary diatribes?” Aengus chuckled and his shoulders shook with it. “His last one was to us, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, the infamous lecture about how he permitted us to use his library for magic lessons, not water play.” My own shoulders trembled with subdued laughter remembering Father’s face. It contorted so much that it almost wrinkled as mine did. He’d rushed around the room to make sure all of his precious scrolls had their seals intact. All the while Aengus splashed me and prompted me to do the same to him.
“I believe in a well rounded magical education. Was it my fault we were studying elements at the time and we hadn’t practiced water yet?” Aengus pressed his hand to his chest and feigned boyish innocence.
“As mentor, it falls on you to impart respect as well as knowledge.” I held up an authoritative finger as I imitated my father’s deep voice. “As my younger brother—nay, as my fosterling—I entrusted you with the sanctity of my personal domain to salvage what potential my son has squandered. Yet you encourage his antics. I wash my hands of the both of you!”
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Aengus laughed, hearty and full as he clutched his stomach. He wiped tears from the corners of his eyes when he spoke next. “It’s uncanny how well you impersonate him. He has improved with Etain, though?”
“For the moment, yes.” I pressed my lips together, remembering their shared laughter at my embarrassment. “They laid together and she was smiling with him.”
“While of her own mind? No spells?”
“Yes. She never seems like the same woman twice, but she hasn’t attacked me once since the last time.”
“She did seem calmer.” Aengus’ gaze met mine, so intense it disturbed me for a moment. “She even seemed like she had made some progress coming to terms with her continued existence.”
“Yes, that’s a good thing.” I leaned as far as the poppies let me and squeezed my mentor’s shoulder. His youthful face was known for fooling others into forgetting that he was one of the oldest Aos Si left. For the briefest flicker, that age showed millennia of lost loved ones and harsh choices all at once. He seemed human, almost.
“You never told me how your dalliances with that changeling were going.” The wizened man changed back to the boy-king of Midhe. “Riona’s pet, what sort of young woman is she?”
“She is pleasant company.” I raised my brows toward my uncle for the sudden change in subject. “Her sensibilities are practical to a fault and blunt to the point of uncaring at times. However, she makes witticisms enough to spar with me and her resilience in the face of being taken from her home to an impossibly foreign realm is admirable.”
“You like her, then?”
“I do.”
“That makes this easier.” Aengus rose. All mites of cheer fell from his expression, leaving it a blank mask. No longer a loving uncle or a happy king, but a foreboding messenger.
“Talk sense, will you?” I wriggled my legs, held fast under the mass of red flowers. “And let me up. This sudden tone shift of yours has made your antics lose their luster.”
“No antics this time, sweet prince.” He concealed his fingers and their fidgets behind his back. “When I first found my tome missing I didn’t think I had to worry about you figuring it out. It was linked to you from birth, yet you passed it more than a thousand times without notice.”
“You…you weren’t the one that left it?” I thrust my hands into the soil behind me and forced the little power I had left into overcoming the poppies. But I was so tired. The portal had drained so much.
“Had it been left solely up to me, Daire, you would be wasting away without a hope.” A passive regret flicked across his features, but not enough for how my heart cracked.
“Who…But you…” I could hardly form words, let alone coherent thoughts.
“Midir asked to meet with me right after Bodb issued the order for your…the Key’s destruction.” Aengus’ forearms tensing with restraint as if he held back his tendency to gesticulate. “He pled with me in the same way as when he begged me to manufacture the escape for you. After he left…well I didn’t think you would be able to succeed so I let it be.”
“All these years of lessons and raising me didn’t convince you that I valued my own life enough to try and save it?”
“Making a way to unbind you meant creating a reverse image of the spell that sealed the Key into you. The treasures holding the fabric of Tir Na Nog together made the seal. Tying you to the High King required his presence, or his blood, the latter of which you already share. However, releasing you from the Key without killing you was the puzzle.” Aengus’ hands freed themselves, pointing to the invisible elements of his explanation as he introduced them. “There also had to be a vessel to transfer Tir Na Nog’s powers into, which required a fresh birth. In this case, it wasn’t the Key I needed to move, it was the High King’s tie. Having the vessel alone handle the items helped to channel the powers better and added more challenge, so if successful that meant a more effective result. Making the vessel human was much the same, since humans represent mortality and there were not many to be found. To make it permanent, though, the spell needed to do the opposite of new life. It must serve as a sacrifice.”
“You…set me up to choose between my life or Mother’s.” Between my life or Maya’s.
“That’s why I expected you to fail.” Aengus nodded, folding his arms in front of him. “What I could not foresee was your sister fetching a changeling and you taking advantage of that. At first I wasn’t sure if she would be a problem. But then Manannan came to us asking about his Spear and the Cauldron going missing. And now I find you hiding the Sword.”
“You’re not here to help me, are you?” I stopped struggling against the plant binds, my legs limp as if his very words had paralyzed them. That sensation crept upwards through the rest of my body bit by bit. I wasn’t sure if it was my own shock numbing me or my uncle’s power.
“No, I’m not.”
“My father raised you as his own. My mother was a lover to you once. I’m…”
“My beloved shadow, almost like a son.”
“Why?” Tears built and pricked my eyes.
“Because I have no other choice.” Aengus crouched in front of me, smoothing my hair from my face like when he comforted me as a mere child. I didn’t want it to give me solace, but it did. “Bodb is also my brother and my liege. His priority has always been our people and our preservation. When he asked me to seal Tir Na Nog in the midst of that human invasion, I had only a matter of hours, maybe a day to prepare a spell of that magnitude. With your birth so close I could only cobble together the resources I had on hand. Given proper time and collaboration with someone like Manannan, we would not have needed to make a Key at all. We might have protected our portion of the Otherworld better. I miss humanity, especially hearing about their achievements through your eyes, but with that progress has come more risk if we were to go back. Explosive pellets that shoot like arrows, buildings with iron in their very bones, rolling steel containers that shoot fire. They don’t think we exist now, but what happens when hundreds of us swarm out? Don’t you see that they could use those devices that can capture a moving image in an instant to gather their masses and attack? We have spent too long away. They would wipe us out without a second thought.”
“The moment I was born you doomed me. I only wanted to take Mother and leave,” I pleaded, my voice cracking. “Why not banish me to their world and let me be?”
“So long as you and the Key exist, the risk of extinction hangs over all of us. Even worse if you were free of the High King’s bond.” Aengus cupped my cheek. “I can grant part of your wish. You’ll spend what time you have left experiencing humanity’s wonders rather than watching them.”
“I don’t want to die!” I clutched his shoulders and pulled him closer, making him feel my every breath. “Please, find another way. Think of Mother, think of Father! Does he even know you’re killing his only son?”
“The only people who know are me and you. Soon that girl will join us. That is how it must stay.” He covered my eyes and cradled the back of my head. A supernatural weariness overcame my muscles as he gently lowered me to the ground. “Now sleep.”