“It will, aye, it will.”
“And you need to be finding the woman to suit you,” Teagan added, “for you’d make a fine father.”
“I’m more than fine with the two of you providing the children so I can be the happy uncle.”
“She’s hair like fire, eyes like the sea in storms, and a shimmer of power of her own.” Brannaugh sat back, rubbing a hand over the mound of her belly. “It comes in waves these days. Some from him, I’m thinking—he’s impatient.” Then she smiled. “It’s good seeing the woman who’d take you, Eamon. Not just for a tumble, but for the fall.”
“I’m not after a woman. Or not one in particular.”
Teagan reached out, laid a hand on his. “You think, and always have, you’re not to have a woman, a wife, as you’ve sisters to protect. You’re wrong, and always have been. We are three, Eamon, and both of us as able as you. When you love, you’ll have no say in it.”
“Don’t be arguing with a woman who carries a child, especially a witch who does,” Brannaugh said lightly. “I never looked for love, but it found me. Teagan waited for it, and it found her. You can run from it, mo dearthair. But find you it will.
“When we go home.” Her eyes filled again. “Ah, curse it, I’m watering up every time I take a breath it seems. This you have to look to, Teagan. The moods come and go as they will.”
“You felt it as well.” Now Eamon laid a hand on Brannaugh’s so the three were joined. “We’re going home, and soon.”
“At the next moon. We must leave on the next full moon.”
“I hoped it would wait,” Teagan murmured. “I hoped it would wait until you’re finished birthing, though I knew in my head and my heart it would not wait.”
“I will birth this son in Mayo. This child will be born at home. And yet . . . This is home as well. Not for you,” she said to Eamon. “You’ve waited, you’ve bided, you’ve stayed, but your heart, your mind, your spirit is ever there.”
“We were told we would go home again. So I waited. The three, the three that came from us. They wait as well.” Eamon ran his fingers over the blue stone he wore around his neck. “We’ll see them again.”
“I dream of them,” Brannaugh said. “Of the one who shares my name, and the others as well. They fought and they failed.”
“They will fight again,” Teagan said.
“They gave him pain.” A fierce light came into Eamon’s eyes. “He bled, as he bled when the woman named Meara, the one who came with Connor of the three, struck him with her sword.”
“He bled,” Brannaugh agreed. “And he healed. He gathers again. He pulls in power from the dark. I can’t see where, how, but feel only. I can’t see if we will change what’s to come, if we can and will end him. But I see them, and know if we cannot, they will fight again.”
“So we go home, and find the way. So they who come from us won’t fight alone.”
Brannaugh thought of her children, sleeping upstairs. Safe, innocent still. And the children of her children’s children, in another time, in Mayo. Neither safe, she thought, nor innocent.
“We will find the way. We will go home. But tonight, for tonight, we’ll feast. We’ll have music. And we three will give thanks to all who came before us for the light. For the lives,” she said, with a hand light on his sister’s belly, and one on her own.
“And tomorrow.” Eamon stood. “We begin to end what took the lives of our father, of our mother.”
“Will you bide with Brannaugh? I would speak with Gealbhan now.”
“Give him only the joy today.” Brannaugh rose with her sister. “Tomorrow is soon enough for the rest. Take today for joy alone, for time is so short.”
“I will.” She kissed her sister, her brother. “Eoghan must bring his harp.”
“Be sure he will. We’ll fill the wood with music and send it flying over the hills.”
She sat again when Teagan left, and Eamon nudged her tea toward her. “Drink it. You’re pale.”
“A bit tired. Eoghan knows. I’ve talked with him, and he’s ready to leave—leave all he built here. I never thought it would be hard to go back. Never knew I would be torn in two ways.”
“Gealbhan’s brothers will tend the land here, for you and for Teagan.”
“Aye, and it’s a comfort. Not for you, the land here it’s never been for you.” Here again was sorrow and joy mixed into one. “You will stay in Mayo, whatever comes. I can’t see what we will do, Eoghan and I, the children. But Teagan will come back here, that I see clear. This is her place now.”
“It is,” he agreed. “She will ever be a dark witch of Mayo, but her home and heart are for Clare.”
“How will it be for us, Eamon, not to be together as we have been all our lives?”
His eyes, the wild blue of their father’s, looked deep into hers. “A distance in space means nothing. We are always together.”
“I’m weepy and foolish, and I dislike it very much. I hope this mood is a brief one or I might curse myself.”
“Well, you were given to tempers and sharp words toward the end of carrying young Sorcha. It may be I prefer the weeping.”
“I don’t, that’s for certain.” She drank the tea, knowing it would settle her. “I’ll add a bit more to the tonic I give Kathel and Alastar, for the journey. Roibeard does well without it yet. He’s strong.”
“He’s hunting now,” Eamon said of his hawk. “He goes farther each time. He goes north now, every day north. He knows, as we do, we’ll travel soon.”
“We will send word ahead. We will be welcome at Ashford Castle. The children of Sorcha and Daithi. The Dark Witches will be made welcome.”
“I’ll see to that.” He sat back with his own tea, smiled at her. “Hair like fire, is it?”
As he’d wanted, she laughed. “Oh, and you’ll be struck dumb and half blind, I promise you, when you meet.”
“Not I, my darling. Not I.”
2
FOR THE CHILDREN IT WAS AN ADVENTURE. THE IDEA OF a long journey, of the traveling to a new place—with the prize of a castle at the end of it, had Brin especially eager to go, to begin.
While Brannaugh packed what they’d need, she thought again of that long-ago morning, rushing to do her mother’s bidding, packing all she was told to pack. So urgent, she thought now, so final. And that last look at her mother, burning with the power left in her, outside the cabin in the woods.
Now she packed to go back, a duty, a destiny she’d always accepted. Eagerly wished for—until the birth of her first child, until that swamping flood of love for the boy who even now raced about all but feverish in his excitement.
But she had a task yet to face here.
She gathered what she needed—bowl, candle, book, the herbs and stones. And with a glance at her little boy, felt both pride and regret.
“It is time for him, for this,” she told Eoghan.
Understanding, he kissed her forehead. “I’ll take Sorcha up. It’s time she was abed.”
Nodding, she turned to Brin, called him.
“I’m not tired. Why can’t we leave now and sleep under the stars?”
“We leave on the morrow, but first there are things we must do, you and I.”
She sat, opened her arms. “First, come sit with me. My boy,” she murmured, when he crawled onto her lap. “My heart. You know what I am.”
“Ma,” he said and cuddled into her.
“I am, but you know, as I’ve never hidden it from you, what I am besides. Dark witch, keeper of magicks, daughter of Sorcha and Daithi. This is my blood. This is your blood as well. See the candle?”
“You made the candle. Ma’s make the candles and bake the cakes, and Da’s ride the horses.”
“Is that the way of it?” She laughed, and decided she’d let him have that illusion for a little while more. “Well, it’s true enough I made the candle. See the wick, Brin? The wick is cold and without light. See the candle, Brin, see the wick. See the light and flame, the tiny flame, and the heat, the light to be. You have the light in you, the flame in you. See the wick, Brin.”
She crooned it to him, over and over, felt his energy begin to settle, his thoughts begin to join with her.
“The light is power. The power is light. In you, of you, through you. Your blood, my blood, our blood, your light, my light, our light. Feel what lives in you, what waits in you. See the wick, it waits for your light. For your power. Bring it. Let it rise, slow, slow, gentle and clean. Reach for it, for it belongs to you. Reach, touch, rise. Bring the light.”
The wick sparked, died away, sparked again, then burned true.
Brannaugh pressed a kiss to the top of his head. There, she thought, there, the first learned. And her boy would never be just a child again.
Joy and sorrow, forever entwined.
“That is well done.”
He turned his face up, smiled at her. “Can I do another?”
“Aye,” she said, kissed him again. “But heed me now, and well, for there is more to learn, more to know. And the first you must know, must heed, must vow is you harm none with what you are, what you have. Your gift, Brin? An’ it harm none. Swear this to me, to yourself, to all who’ve come before, all who will come after.”
She lifted her athame, used it on her palm. “A blood oath we make. Mother to son, son to mother, witch to witch.”
Solemn-eyed, he held out his hand to her, blinked at the quick pain when she nicked it.
“An’ it harm none,” he said when she took his hand, mixed her blood with his.
“An’ it harm none,” she repeated, then gathered him close, kissed the little hurt, healed it. “Now, you may do another candle. And after, together, we will make charms, for protection. For you, for your sister, for your father.”
“What of you, Ma?”
She touched her pendant. “I have what I need.”
• • •
IN THE MORNING MISTS, SHE CLIMBED ONTO THE WAGON, her little girl bundled at her side. She looked at her boy, so flushed with delight in the saddle in front of his father. She looked at her sister, fair and quiet astride Alastar; her brother, their grandfather’s sword at his side, tall and straight on the horse he called Mithra. And Gealbhan steady and waiting on the pretty mare Alastar had sired three summers before.
She clucked to Gealbhan’s old plow horse, and with Brin letting out a whoop, began. She looked back once, just once at the house she’d come to love, asked herself if she would ever see it again.
Then, she looked ahead.
A healer found welcome wherever she went—as did a harpist. Though the baby heavy in her belly was often restless, she and her family found shelter and hospitality along the wild way.
Eoghan made music, she or Teagan or Eamon offered salves or potions to the ailing or the injured. Gealbhan offered his strong back and calloused hands.
One fine night they slept under the stars as Brin so wished, and there was comfort in knowing the hound, the hawk, the horse guarded what was hers.
They met no trouble along the way, but then she knew the word had gone about. The Dark Witches, all three, journeyed through Clare and on to Galway.
“The word would reach Cabhan as well,” Eamon said as they paused in their travels to rest the horses, to let the children run free for a time.
She sat between him and Teagan while Gealbhan and Eoghan watered the horses and Eamon dropped a line into the water.
“We’re stronger than we were,” Teagan reminded him. “We journeyed south as children. We go north children no more.”
“He worries.” Brannaugh stroked her belly. “As you and I carry more than we did.”
“I don’t doubt your power or your will.”
“And still you worry.”
“I wonder if it must be now,” Eamon admitted, “even knowing it must be now. I feel it as both of you, and yet would be easier if there was time for both of you to have proper lyings-in before we face what we must face.”
“What’s meant is meant, but in truth I’m glad we’ll break our journey for a day or so with our cousins. And by all the gods I’ll be happy to have a day off that bloody wagon.”
“I’m dreaming of Ailish’s honey cakes, for no one has a finer hand with them.”
“Dreaming with his belly,” Teagan said.
“A man needs to eat. Hah!” He pulled up the line, and the wriggling fish who’d taken the hook. “And so we will.”
“You’ll need more than one,” Brannaugh said, and reminded them all of those same words their mother spoke on a fine and happy day on the river at home.
They left the rugged wilds of Clare, pushed by fierce winds, sudden driving rains. They rode through the green hills of Galway, by fields of bleating sheep, by cottages where smoke puffed from chimneys. Roibeard winged ahead, under and through layers of clouds that turned the sky into a soft gray sea.
The children napped in the wagon, tucked in among the bundles, so Kathel sat beside Brannaugh, ever alert.
“There are more cottages than I remember.” Teagan rode beside her on the tireless Alastar.
“The years pass.”
“It’s good land here—I can all but hear Gealbhan thinking it.”
“Would you plant yourself here then? Does it speak to you?”
“It does. But so does our cabin in the woods in Clare. And still, the closer we come to home, the more I ache for it. We had to put that aside for so long, all of us, but now . . . Do you feel it, Brannaugh? That call to home?”
“Aye.”
“Are you afraid?”
“Aye. Of what’s to come, but more of failing.”
“We won’t.” At Brannaugh’s sharp look, Teagan shook her head. “No, I’ve had no vision, but only a certainty. One that grows stronger as we come closer to home. We won’t fail, for light will always beat the dark, though it take a thousand years.”
“You sound like her,” Brannaugh murmured. “Like our mother.”
“She’s in all of us, so we won’t fail. Oh, look, Brannaugh! That tree there with the twisted branches. It’s the very one Eamon told our cousin Mabh came to life each full moon, to scare her. We’re nearly to Ailish’s farm. We’re all but there.”
“Go on, ride ahead.”
Her face lit so she might’ve been a child again, Teagan tossed back her head and laughed. “So I will.”
She rode to her husband, let out a fresh laugh, then set off in a gallop. Beside Brannaugh, Kathel whined, quivered.
“Go on then.” Brannaugh gave him a stroke.
He leaped out of the wagon, raced behind the horse with the hawk flying above them.
It was a homecoming, for they’d lived on the farm for five years. Brannaugh found it as tidy as ever, with new outbuildings, a new paddock where young horses danced.
She saw a young boy with bright hair all but wrapped around Kathel. And knew when the boy smiled at her, he was Lughaidh, the youngest and last of her cousin’s brood.
Ailish herself rushed over to the wagon. She’d grown a bit rounder, and streaks of gray touched her own fair hair. But her eyes were as lively and young as ever.
“Brannaugh! Oh look at our Brannaugh! Seamus, come over and help your cousin down from the wagon.”
“I’m fine.” Brannaugh clambered down herself, embraced her cousin. “Oh, oh, it does my heart good to see you again.”
“And mine, seeing you. Oh, you’re a beauty, as ever. So like your mother. And here’s our Eamon, so handsome. My cousins, three, come back as you said you would. I’ve sent the twins off to get Bardan from the field, and Seamus, you run over and tell Mabh her cousins are here.”
Teary-eyed, she embraced Brannaugh again. “Mabh and her man have their own cottage, just across the way. She’s near ready to birth her first. I’m to be a granny! Oh, I can’t stop my tongue from wagging. It’s Eoghan, aye? And Teagan’s Gealbhan. Welcome, welcome all of you. But where are your children?”
“Asleep in the wagon.”
Nothing would do but for Ailish to gather them up, to ply them with the honey cakes Eamon remembered so fondly. Then Conall, who’d been but a babe in arms when last she’d seen him, took her children off to see a new litter of puppies.
“They’ll be fine, my word on it,” Ailish said as she poured out tea. “He’s a good lad, is Conall—one you helped bring into the world. We’ll let the men see to the horses and that, and you’ll both take your ease awhile.”
“Praise be.” Brannaugh sipped the tea, let it and the fire warm her, soothe her. “I’m sitting in a chair that’s not moving.”
“Eat. You’ve another in you who needs the food as well.”
“I’m starving all the day and half the night. Teagan’s not as hungry—yet. But she will be.”
“Oh, are you carrying?” Delight glowed on her face as Ailish stopped her fussing with tea, laid her hands over her own heart. “My sweet little Teagan, to be a mother. The years, where do they go? You were but a babe yourself. Will you stay? Will you stay until your time comes?” she asked Brannaugh. “It’s still a distance to Mayo, and you’re close. I can see you’re close.”
“A day or two only, and so grateful for it. The babe will be born in Mayo. It’s meant. It’s what must be.”
“Must it?” Ailish gripped Brannaugh’s hand, then Teagan’s in turn. “Must it? You’ve made your lives in Clare. You’re women, mothers. Must you go back to the dark that waits?”
“We’re women, and mothers, and more. We can turn our back on none of it. But don’t fret, cousin. Don’t think of it. We have today, with tea and cakes and family.”
“We will come back again.” When they looked at her, Teagan pressed a hand to her heart. “I feel it so strong. We will come back again. Believe that. Believe in us. I think faith only makes us stronger.”
“If that’s so, you’ll have all of mine.”
They had music and feasting and family. And for a night and a day peace. Still Brannaugh found herself restless. Though her man slept in the bed Ailish had provided them, she sat by the fire.
Ailish came in, wearing her night-robes and a thick shawl.
“You need some of the tea you always made for me when I was so close to the end, and the babe so heavy in me I couldn’t sleep.”
“I look for her in the fire and smoke,” Brannaugh murmured. “I can’t help the looking, I miss her so. More as we near home. I miss my father; it’s an ache. But my mother is a kind of grieving that won’t end.”
“I know it.” Ailish sat beside her. “Does she come to you?”
“In dreams. There are moments, but only moments. I long to hear her voice, to have her tell me I’m doing right. That I’m doing what she’d want of me.”
“Oh, my love, you are. You are. Do you remember the day you left us?”
“I do. I hurt you by leaving.”
“Leaving always hurts, but it was what was right—I’ve come to know it. Before you left you told me of Lughaidh, the babe I carried. You said he must be the last, for neither I nor a babe would live through another birthing. And you gave me a potion to drink, every moon until the bottle was empty. So there would be no more children for me. It grieved me.”
“I know.” And knew it more poignantly now that she had her own children. “You are the best of mothers, and were one to me.”
“I would not have lived to see my children grown, to see my oldest girl ripe with her own child. To see, as you told me, Lughaidh, so bright and sweet, with a voice—as you said—like an angel.”
Nodding, Ailish studied the fire in turn, as if seeing that day again in the smoke and flame. “You laid protection over me and mine, gave me the years I might not have had. You are what she would want. Even as it grieves me that you will go, you will face Cabhan, I know you must. Never doubt she is proud of you. Never