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Kitabı oku: «Child of the Prophecy», sayfa 3

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I reached up a hand to stroke the long muzzle of a placid grey beast, and the lad who had whistled before appeared at my side. He was a gangling, freckled fellow somewhat older than myself. I had seen him many times with the others, and never exchanged so much as a word. Behind him a couple more boys hovered.

‘His name’s Silver.’ This was offered with diffidence, as if the speaker were not quite sure of his possible reception. There was a pause. Some response from me was clearly expected. It was all very well to maintain the Glamour, to keep myself as this not-quite-myself that they all seemed to want to look at and talk to. My techniques were well up to that. But I must also act in keeping; find the words, the smiles, the little gestures. Find the courage. I slipped a hand into the pocket of my gown, repeated the words of an old spell silently in my head, and drew out a wrinkled apple that had not been there when we left home.

‘Is it all right if I give him this?’ I asked sweetly, arching my brows and trying for a shy smile.

The boy nodded, grinning. Now I had five of them around me, leaning with studied casualness on the wall, or half-hiding behind one another, peering around for a better look without being conspicuous. I put the apple on the palm of my hand, and the horse ate it. His ears were laid back. He was uneasy with me, and I knew why.

‘Is it true you can make fire with your hands?’ blurted out one of the lads suddenly.

‘Hush your mouth, Paddy,’ said the first one with a scowl. ‘What are you thinking of, asking the young lady something like that?’

‘None of our business, I’m sure,’ said another, though doubtless he, like all of them, had exchanged his fair share of speculative gossip about what we got up to, those long lonely times in the Honeycomb.

‘It’s my father who’s the sorcerer, not me,’ I said softly, still stroking the horse’s muzzle with delicate fingers. ‘I’m just a girl.’

‘Haven’t seen you out and about much this summer,’ commented the freckled boy. ‘Keeps you busy, does he?’

I gave a nod, allowing my expression to become crestfallen. ‘There’s only my father and me, you see.’ I imagined myself as a dutiful daughter, cooking sustaining meals, mending and sweeping and tending to my father, and I could see the same image in their eyes.

‘A shame, that,’ said one of the lads. ‘You should come down sometimes. There’s dancing and games and good times here in the camp. Pity to miss it.’

‘Maybe –’ began the other boy, but I never heard what he was about to say, for it was at that point my father called me, and the lads melted away quicker than spring snow, leaving me alone with the horse. And as I turned to follow my father obediently back home I saw Darragh, over on the far side of the horse lines, brushing down his white pony. Aoife, her name was; he’d argued long and hard with Dan to be allowed to keep her, and he’d had his way in the end. Now Darragh glanced at me and looked away, and not by so much as a twitch of the brow or a movement of the hand did he give me any recognition.

‘Very good,’ my father said as we walked home in the chill of a rising west wind. ‘Very good indeed. You’re getting the feeling of this. However, this is just the beginning. I’d like you to develop a degree of sophistication. You’ll need that at Sevenwaters. The folk there are somewhat different from these fishermen and simple travellers. We must begin work on that.’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘We might start sooner than planned, I think. As soon as Dan’s folk are away we’ll take the next step. You can have one day’s rest. You’ve earned that much; we cannot afford more. Use the day wisely.’

There was no choice in it; there never had been. ‘Yes, Father,’ I said, and as we made our way up the cliff path and into the dark tunnels of the Honeycomb, I let the Glamour slip away and was once more my limping, clumsy self. I had done what my father asked. Why, then, did I feel so unhappy? Hadn’t I proved I could be what I pleased? Hadn’t I shown I could make people admire me and bend them to my will? Yet, later, lying on my bed, I stared into the darkness and felt an emptiness inside me that bore no relation whatever to spells, and enchantments, and the mastery of the craft.

It was a night of restless dreams, and I awoke before dawn, shivering under my woollen blanket, hearing the howl of the wind, and the roar of the sea as it pounded the rocks of the Honeycomb. Not a good day to be abroad. Perhaps Dan Walker and his folk would decide to stay a little longer. But it never did happen that way. They were as true to their time as birds flying away for the winter, their arrivals and departures as precise as the movement of shadows in a sacred circle. You could count your year by them. The golden times. The grey times. It seemed to me the voice of the wind had words in it. I will sweep you bare … bareI will take all … all … And the sea responded in kind. I am hungry … give me … give

I put my hands over my ears and curled up tight. It was supposed to be a day of rest, after all. Might I not sleep in peace, at least until the sun rose? But the voices would not go away, so I got up and dressed, not sure what the day might hold, but thinking I would make myself very busy indeed, and try to ignore the sick, empty feeling in my stomach. It was as I pulled on my boots that I heard, very faintly through the blast of the wind, another sound. A note or two, fragments of a tune over a steady, solid drone. The voice of the pipes. So, they were not gone yet. Not stopping to think, I grabbed my shawl and was away, out of doors and up the hill towards the standing stones, my hair whipped this way and that in the wild weather, the sea spray pursuing me as far from the cliffs as its icy fingers could stretch.

Darragh stopped playing when he saw me. He’d found a sheltered spot amongst the stones, and sat with his legs outstretched and his back to the great dolmen we called the Guardian, not disrespectful exactly, just blending in as if he belonged there, the same as the rabbits. I stumbled forward, pushing my hair back from my eyes, and sat down beside him. I clutched my shawl closer around me. It was still barely dawn, and the air held the first touch of a distant winter.

It took me a while to catch my breath.

‘Well,’ said Darragh eventually, which wasn’t much help.

‘Well,’ I echoed.

‘You’re abroad early.’

‘I heard you playing.’

‘I’ve played up here often enough, this summer. Didn’t bring you out before. We’re leaving this morning. But I suppose you knew that.’

I nodded, sudden misery near overwhelming me. ‘I’m sorry,’ I mumbled. ‘I’ve been busy. Too busy to come out. I –’

‘Don’t apologise. Not if you don’t mean it,’ said Darragh lightly.

‘But I did want – I hadn’t any choice,’ I told him.

Darragh looked at me straight, his brown eyes very serious and a little frown on his face. ‘There’s always a choice, Fainne,’ he said soberly.

Then we sat in silence for a while, and at length he took up the pipes and began to play again, some tune I did not recognise that was sad enough to bring the tears to your eyes. Not that I’d have cried over so foolish a thing, even if I’d been capable of it.

‘There’s words to that tune,’ Darragh ventured. ‘I could teach you. It sounds bonny, with the pipes and the singing.’

‘Me, sing?’ I was jolted out of my misery. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Never tried, have you?’ said Darragh. ‘Odd, that. I’ve never yet met a soul without some music in them. I bet you could sing fit to call the seals up out of the ocean, if you gave it a try.’ His tone was coaxing.

‘Not me,’ I said flatly. ‘I’ve better things to do. More important things.’

‘Like what?’

‘Things. You know I can’t talk about it.’

‘Fainne.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t like to see you doing that – that – doing what you were doing yesterday. I don’t like it.’

‘Doing what?’ I lifted my brows as haughtily as I could manage, and stared straight at him. He looked steadily back.

‘Carrying on with the lads. Flirting. Behaving like some – some silly girl. It’s not right.’

‘I can’t imagine what you mean,’ I retorted scornfully, though I was struck to the heart by his criticism. ‘Anyway, you weren’t even looking at me.’

Darragh gave his crooked grin, but there was no mirth in it. ‘I was looking, all right. You made sure everyone would be looking.’

I was silent.

‘My father was right, you know,’ he said after a while. ‘You should get wed, have a brood of children, settle down. You need looking after.’

‘Nonsense,’ I scoffed. ‘I can look after myself.’

‘You need keeping an eye on,’ persisted Darragh. ‘Maybe you can’t see it, and maybe your father can’t see it, but you’re a danger to yourself.’

‘Rubbish,’ I said, bitterly offended that he should think me so inadequate. ‘Besides, who would I wed, here in the bay? A fisherman? A tinker’s lad? Hardly.’

‘You’re right, of course,’ Darragh said after a moment. ‘Quite unsuitable, it’d be. I see that.’ Then he got to his feet, lifting the pipes neatly onto his shoulder. He had grown a lot, this last year, and had begun to show a dark shadow of beard around the chin. He had acquired a small gold ring in one ear, just like his father’s.

‘I’d best be off, then.’ He looked at me unsmiling. ‘Slip you in my pocket and take you with me, I would, if you were a bit smaller. Keep you out of harm’s way.’

‘I’d be too busy anyway,’ I said, as the desolation of parting swept over me once again. It never got any easier, year after year, and knowing I would myself be leaving next autumn made this time even worse. ‘I have work to do. Difficult work, Darragh.’

‘Mm.’ He didn’t really seem to be listening to me, just looking. Then he reached over to tweak my hair, not too hard, and he said what he always said. ‘Goodbye, Curly. I’ll see you next summer. Keep out of trouble, now, until I come back.’

I nodded, incapable of speech. Somehow, even though I had learned so much this season, even though I had come close to a mastery of my craft, it seemed all of a sudden that the summer had been utterly wasted, that I had squandered something precious and irreplaceable. I watched my friend as he made his way through the circle of stones, the wind tugging and tearing at his old clothes and whipping his dark hair out behind him, and then he went down the other side of the hill and was gone. And it was cold, so cold I felt it in the very marrow, a chill that no warm fire nor sheepskin coat could keep at bay. I went home, and still the sun was barely creeping up the eastern sky, dark red behind storm-tossed clouds. As I walked back to the Honeycomb, and lit a lantern to see me in through the shadowy passages, I made my breathing into a pattern. One breath in, long and deep from the belly. Out in steps, like the cascades of a great waterfall. Control, that was what it was all about. You had to keep control. Lose that, and the exercise of the craft was pointless. I was a sorcerer’s daughter. A sorcerer’s daughter did not have friends or feelings; she could not afford them. Look at my father. He had tried to live a different sort of life, and all it had brought him was heartache and bitterness. Far wiser to concentrate on the craft, and put the rest aside.

Back in my room I made myself picture the travelling folk loading their carts, harnessing their horses, setting off up the track northwards with their dogs running alongside and the lads bringing up the rear. I made myself think of Darragh on his white pony, and forced myself to hear his words again. I don’t like to see you doing that … you made sure everyone would be looking … you’re a danger to yourself … If that was how he saw me, it was surely far better that our paths were separating now. Year after year, season after season I had waited for him, pinning my hope and happiness on his return. It had seemed to me, sometimes, that I was not fully alive unless he was there. Now my grandmother was coming, and I was being sent away; everything was changing. Best if I put Darragh from my thoughts and just get on with things. Best if I learn to do without him. Besides, what could a travelling boy understand about sorcery, and shape-changing, and the arts of the mind? It was a different world; a world beyond his wildest imaginings. It was a world in which, finally, one must be strong enough to move forward quite alone.

Chapter Two

That day I set all my things in order. I tidied my narrow bed and folded the blanket. I swept the stone floor of my bedchamber, which was one of many caves in the Honeycomb’s maze of chambers and passages. I put away my shawl and outdoor boots in the small wooden chest which housed my few possessions. Our life was very simple. Work, rest, eat when we must. We needed little. Deep in the chest, half-hidden under winter bedding, was Riona. She was the only possession I had that was not a strict essential of life. Riona was a doll. When folk spoke of my mother, they would say how beautiful she was, and how slender, like a young birch, and how much my father had loved her. They’d say how she was always a little touched in the head, though it had shocked them when she did the terrible thing she did. But you never heard them talk about her talents, the way they’d mention that Dan was a champion on the pipes, or Molly the neatest basketweaver, or how Peg’s dumplings were the tastiest anywhere in Kerry. You’d have thought my mother had no qualities at all, save beauty and madness. But I knew different. You only had to look at Riona to know my mother had been expert with the needle. After all these years Riona was more than a little threadbare, her features somewhat blurred and her gown thin in patches. But she’d been made strong and neat, with such tiny, even stitches they were near invisible. She had fingers and toes, and embroidered eyelashes. She had long woollen hair coloured as yellow as tansy, and a gown of rose-hued silk over a lace petticoat. The necklace Riona wore, wound three times around her small neck for safekeeping, was the strongest thing of all. It was strangely woven of many different fibres, and so crafted that it could not be broken, not should the greatest force be exerted on it. Threaded on this cord was a little white stone with a hole in it. I did not play with Riona in Father’s presence. Of course, now I was too old for play. It was a waste of time, like taking silly, dangerous dives off the rocks when there was no need for it. But over the years Riona had shared countless adventures with Darragh and me. She had explored deep caves and precipitous gullies; had narrowly avoided falling from cliffs into the sea, and being left behind on the sand in the path of a rising tide. She had worn crowns of threaded daisies and cloaks of rabbit skin. She had sat under the standing stones watching us as if she were a queen surveying her subjects. Her dark embroidered eyes held a knowledge of me that could at times be disturbing. Riona did not judge, not exactly. She observed. She took stock.

That day I felt a strong need to be occupied, to channel my thoughts into the strictly practical. So, when my chamber was bare and clean, I went to the place where we kept our small supply of food, and took the fish the girl had brought, and a few turnips. The fish was already gutted and scaled. My father and I were not cooks. We ate because it was necessary, that was all. But I had time to fill. So I made up the fire, and let it die down, and then I roasted the turnips in the coals, and baked the fish on top. When it was ready I took a plateful down to the workroom for my father. But the door was bolted from the inside. I could not hear his voice chanting or speaking words of magic. The only sound was the harsh cawing of a bird within the vaulted chamber. That meant Fiacha was back. My heart sank, for I disliked Fiacha intensely. The raven came and went as he pleased, and when he stayed in the household he always seemed to be staring at me with his little, bright eyes, summing me up and finding me less than impressive. Then he’d be suddenly gone again, without so much as a by-your-leave. Perhaps he brought messages. Father never said. I did not like Fiacha’s sharp beak or the dangerous glint in his eye. He pecked me once when I was little, and it hurt a lot. Father said it was an accident, but I was never quite so sure.

I left the food outside the door. There was a rule which need not be spoken, that when the door was locked, one did not seek admittance. Some elements of the craft must be exercised in solitude, and my father sought always to deepen and extend his knowledge. It is too easy for an outsider to judge us wrongly, to see a threat in what we do, simply because of a lack of insight. Our kind are not always made welcome, not in all parts of Erin, for folk tell tales of us which are half truth and half a jumble of their own fears and superstitions. It was not by chance that my father had come to live in this distant, remote corner of Kerry. Here, the folk were simple souls whose lives turned on sea and season, whose world had no place for the luxury of gossip and prejudice. They had accepted him and my mother as just two more dwellers in the bay, quiet, courteous folk who left well alone. And everyone knew a settlement with its own sorcerer was the safest of places to live in. My father had quickly demonstrated that, for one summer, soon after his arrival in Kerry, the Norsemen came. All along the coast there were tales of their raids, the brutal killings, the rape, the burning, the stealing of women and children, and there were tales of the places where they’d come in their longships and simply moved in, taking the cottages and farms and settling down as if they’d a right to. But there was no Viking settlement in our cove. Ciarán had seen to that. Folk still told the story of how the longships with their carven prows had come into view, rowing in hard towards the shore with so little warning there was no time to flee for cover. The sunlight had flashed on the axes and the strange helms the men wore; the many oars had dipped and splashed, dipped and splashed as the fisherfolk stood frozen in terror, watching their death come closer. Then the sorcerer had walked out onto a high ledge of the Honeycomb with his staff of yew in his hand, and raised it aloft, and an instant later, great clouds had begun to roll in from the west, and the swell had risen till white-capped breakers began to pound the shore. The longships had begun to struggle and list, and the neat rows of oars were thrown into confusion. Within moments the sky was dark with storm, and the ocean boiled, and the folk watched round-eyed as the vessels of the Norsemen cracked and split and were torn asunder each in its turn. Later, children found strange and wondrous objects cast up on the shore. An armlet wrought with snakes and dogs, curiously patterned. A necklace in the shape of a tiny, lethal axe threaded on twisted wire. A bronze bowl. The shaft of an oar, fine-fashioned. The body of a man with pale skin and long, plaited hair the colour of wheat at Lugnasad. So, there was no Viking settlement in our cove. After that my father was revered and protected, a man who could do no wrong. When my mother died they grieved with him. All the same, they gave him a wide berth.

All that long day my father stayed in the workroom with the door bolted. When at last he emerged to take up the plateful of food and eat it abstractedly, not noticing it had gone cold waiting for him, he looked pale and tired. Sitting by the remnants of my small cooking fire, he picked at the congealing fish and had nothing to say. Fiacha had followed him and sat on a ledge above, staring at me. I scowled back.

‘Best go to bed, daughter,’ my father said, and coughed harshly. ‘I’m not good company tonight.’

‘Father, you’re sick.’ I stared with alarm as he struggled for breath. ‘You need help. A physic, at least.’

‘Nonsense.’ His expression was grim. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me. Go on now, off to bed with you. This will pass. It’s nothing.’

He had not convinced me in the slightest.

‘Father, please tell me what’s wrong.’

He gave a brief laugh. It was not a happy sound. ‘Where could one begin? Now, enough of this. I’m weary. Good night, Fainne.’

So I was dismissed, and I left him there, unmoving, staring into the heart of the dying fire. As I walked away to my chamber, the sound of his coughing followed me, echoing stark through the underground caverns.

She arrived one morning late in autumn, while Father was away fetching water. I made my way out, hearing her calling from the entrance. We had few visitors. But there she was; an old lady wrapped in shawls, trudging along on foot with never a bag or basket to her name. Her face was all wrinkled and her eyes so sunken you could scarce see what colour they were. She had a crown of dishevelled white hair and a very loud voice.

‘Well, come on, girl! Invite me in. Don’t tell me I wasn’t expected. What’s Ciarán playing at?’

She bustled past me and on down the tunnel towards the workroom as if the place belonged to her. I trotted after, hoping my father would not be too long. Suddenly she whirled back to face me, quicker than any old lady had the right to move, and now she was gazing intently into my eyes, as if assessing me.

‘Know who I am, do you?’

‘Yes, Grandmother,’ I said, for although she seemed quite different from the elegant woman I remembered, I could feel the magic seeping from every part of her, powerful, ancient, and it was plain to me who she must be.

‘Hmm. You’ve grown, Fainne.’ Clearly unimpressed, she turned her back on me and continued her confident progress through the darkened passages of the Honeycomb. Before the great door of the workroom, she halted. She put her hand out and gave a push. The door did not budge. Carven from solid oak, and set in a heavy frame which fitted tightly within its arch of stone, this entry was sealed by iron bolts and by words of power. My father guarded his knowledge closely. The old woman pushed again.

‘You can’t go in there,’ I said, alarmed. ‘My father doesn’t let anyone go in. Just him, and sometimes me. You’ll have to wait.’

‘Wait?’ She lifted her brows and gave an arch smile. On her ancient features, it looked hideous. Her eyes bored through me, as if she wished to read my thoughts. ‘Has your father taught you this trick, how to come out of a room and leave it locked from the inside?’

I nodded, scowling.

‘And how to unlock such a door?’

‘You needn’t think I’m going to open it for you,’ I told her, my voice growing sharp with anger at her temerity. I felt my face flush, and knew the little flames Darragh had once noticed would be starting to show on the edges of my hair. ‘If my father wants it locked, it stays locked. I won’t do it.’

‘Bet you can’t.’ She was taunting me.

‘I won’t open it. I told you.’

She laughed, a young girl’s laugh like a peal of little bells. ‘Then I’ll have to do it myself, won’t I?’ she said lightly, and raised a gnarled, knobby hand towards the heavy oak panels. She clicked her fingers just once, and a bright border of flame licked at the door, all round the edges. Smoke billowed, and I began to cough. For a moment I could see nothing. There was a popping sound, and a creak. The smoke cleared. The great door now stood ajar, its surface blackened and blistered, its heavy bolts hanging useless where they had fallen away from the charred wood.

I stood in the doorway, watching, as the old woman took three steps into my father’s secret room.

‘He won’t be happy,’ I said tightly.

‘He won’t know,’ she replied coolly. ‘Ciarán’s gone. You won’t see him again until we’re quite finished here, child; not until next summer nears its end. It’s just not possible for him to stay, not with me here. No place can hold the two of us. It’s better this way. You and I have a great deal of work to do, Fainne.’

I stood frozen, feeling the shock of what she had told me like a wound to the heart. How could Father do this? Where had he gone? How could he leave me alone with this dreadful old woman?

She was standing in front of the bronze mirror now, apparently admiring herself, for she took out a comb from a pocket in her voluminous attire and proceeded to drag it through her wild tangle of hair. Despite myself, I moved closer.

‘Didn’t Ciarán tell you about me, child? Didn’t he explain anything?’ She stared intently at her reflection. I came up behind, drawn to gaze over her shoulder into the polished surface.

The woman in the mirror stared back at me. She might have been sixteen years old, no more. Her hair was a glossier, prettier version of mine, curling around her shoulders with a life of its own, a rich, deep auburn. Her skin was milk-white, so pale you could see the faint blue tracery of veins on the pearly surface. Her figure was slender but shapely, with curves in all the right places. It was the figure I had tried to create for myself that day when I went down to the camp. I had thought myself skilful, but beside this, my own efforts were paltry. This woman was a master of the craft. I looked into her eyes. They were deep, dark, the colour of ripe mulberries. They were my father’s eyes. They were my own eyes. The old woman smiled back from the mirror, with her red, curving lips and her small, sharp white teeth.

‘As you see,’ she said with a mirthless chuckle, ‘I’ve a lot to teach you. And we’d best start straight away. Making you into a fine lady is going to be quite a challenge.’

For as long as I could remember, it had been the two of us, my father and I, working together or working separately, the day devoted to the practice of the craft. Our meals, our rest, our contacts with the outside world were kept to what was strictly essential: the fetching of water, the gathering of driftwood for the fire. Fish accepted from the girl at the door. Messages entrusted to Dan Walker. I had had the summers with Darragh. But Darragh was gone, and I was grown up now. Those times were over. My father and I understood each other without much need for words. Sometimes he would explain a technique or the theory behind it. Sometimes I would ask a question. Mostly, he let me find out for myself, with a little guidance here and there. He let me make my own mistakes and learn from them. That way, he said, I would become more responsible, and retain those things I most needed to know. Indeed, in time this discipline would lead not just to knowledge, but to understanding. It was an orderly, well-structured existence, if somewhat outside the patterns of ordinary folk.

My grandmother had quite a different method of teaching. She began by telling me Ciarán had neglected my education sorely; the least he could have taught me was to eat politely, not shovel things with my fingers like a tinker’s child. When I sought to defend my father, she silenced me with a nasty little spell that made my tongue swell up and grow fuzzy as a ripe catkin. No wonder she had said she could not live in the same place as her son. One of our most basic rules was that the craft must never be used by teacher against student, or student against teacher. My father would have recoiled from the idea of using magic to inflict punishment. Grandmother employed it with no qualms whatever. I hated the way she spoke of him, of her own son.

‘Well,’ she observed as she watched me eating my fish, her eyes following each scrap as it travelled from platter to lips, ‘he’s taught you shape-shifting and manipulation and sleight of hand. How much good will those skills be to you when you sit at table with the fine folk of Sevenwaters? Can you dance? Can you sing? Can you smile at a man and make his blood stir and his heart race? I thought not. Don’t gape, child. Your education’s been quite inadequate. I blame those druids, they got hold of your father and filled his head with nonsense. It’s just as well he called me when he did. Before I’m done with you, you’ll be expert at the art of twisting a man around your little finger – clumsy, plain thing that you are. I’m an artist.’

‘I have learned much from my father,’ I said angrily. ‘He is a great sorcerer, and deeply respected. I’m not sure we need your – artistry. I have both lore and skills, and will improve both as well as I can, for my father has given me a love of learning. Why spend time and energy on table manners?’

She laughed her young woman’s laugh, so incongruous as it pealed from that wizened, gap-toothed mouth.

‘Oh dear, oh dear. It stamps its little foot, and the sparks fly. The first thing you need to learn is not to give yourself away like that, child. But there’s more, so much more. I know your father has given you a grounding in the skills. The bare bones, so to speak. But you can achieve great things at Sevenwaters if you make the most of your opportunities. I’ll help you, child. Believe me, I know these people.’

From that point on she took charge. I was used to lessons and practice. I was used to working long hours, and being perpetually tired, and keeping on regardless. But these lessons were so tedious. How to eat as neatly as a wren, in tiny little morsels. How to giggle and whisper secrets. How to hold myself upright as I walked, and sway my hips from side to side. This one was not easy, with my foot the way it was. In the end she grew exasperated.

‘You’ll never walk straight in your own guise,’ she told me bluntly. ‘You’ll never dance without making a fool of yourself. No matter. You can use the Glamour when you will. Make yourself as graceful as you want. Have the loveliest feet in the world, if there’s need of them. The only problem is, it gets tiring. Keeping it up all the time, I mean. It wears you down. Why do you think I’m a wrinkled old hag? Our kind live long. Too long, I sometimes think. But I’m the way I am from being charming for Lord Colum all that time, keeping him dancing to my will.’ She gave a sigh. ‘Ah, now, there was a man. Shame that little upstart Sorcha thwarted me. If she hadn’t done what she did, there’d have been no need for all this. It would all have been mine, and in his turn, Ciarán’s. Your wretched mother would never have existed, and nor would you, pet. Think what I could have achieved. It would all have been ours, as it should have been. But she did it, she outwitted me, she and those – those creatures that call themselves fancy names. Otherworld beings. Huh! Power went to their heads a long time ago, that’s their problem. Shut our kind out. We were never good enough for them, and don’t they love reminding us of it? Well, we’ll see what the Fair Folk make of my little gift to them. They’ll be laughing on the other sides of their faces when your work is done, girl.’

Yaş sınırı:
0+
Litres'teki yayın tarihi:
15 mayıs 2019
Hacim:
722 s. 5 illüstrasyon
ISBN:
9780007378760
Telif hakkı:
HarperCollins