Page 78 of Shadow Spell

“Barely, but yes. It could be a trap. Can you feel him, Connor? Is he here with us?”

“The air’s full of magicks.” So full he wondered she couldn’t feel it. “The black and the white, the dark and the light. They beat like pulses.”

“And crawl on the skin.”

So she could feel them. “You won’t go back?”

“I won’t, no.” But she stayed close as they followed the hart toward the light.

Connor cast himself forward, let himself see. And made out the shape, then the face in the shadowed light.

“It’s Eamon.”

“The boy? Sorcha’s son? We’re back centuries.”

“So it seems. He’s older, still a boy yet, but older.” So Connor cast out again, this time speaking mind to mind.It’s Connor of the O’Dwyers who comes. Your blood, your friend.

He felt the boy relax—a bit.Come then, and welcome. But you are not alone.

I bring my friend, and she is yours as well.

The hart drifted off into the dark as the lights merged. Connor saw the little cottage, a small lean-to for horses, a garden of herbs and medicinal plants, well tended.

They’d made a life here, he thought, Sorcha’s three. And a good one.

“You are welcome,” Eamon repeated, and set his light aside to clasp Connor’s hand. “And you,” he said to Meara. “I thought not to see you again.”

“Again?”

Now the boy looked closer, looked deep with eyes as blue as the hawk’s-eye stone he wore around his neck. “You are not Aine?”

“A goddess?” Meara laughed. “No indeed.”

“Not the goddess but the gypsy named for her. You are very like her, but not, I see, not her at all.”

“This is Meara, my friend, and yours. She is one of our circle. Tell me, cousin, how long has it been for you since you saw me?”

“Three years. But I knew I would see you again. The gypsy told me, and I saw she had the gift. She came to trade one spring morning, and told me she’d followed the magicks and the omens to our door. So she said I had kin from another time, and we would meet again, in and out of dreams.”

“In and out,” Connor considered.

“She said we would go home again, and meet our destiny. You have her face, my lady, and her bearing. You come from her, she who called herself Aine. So I’ll thank you as I did her for giving me hope when I needed it.”

He looked at Connor. “It was after our first winter here, and the dark seemed never to lift. I pined for home, despaired of seeing it again.”

He’d grown tall, Connor observed, and confident. “You’ve made a home here.”

“We live, and we learn. It’s good land here, and the wild of it calls. But we, the three, must see home again before we can make our own, and keep it.”

“But it’s not time yet, is it? I’ll trust you’ll know when it is. Your sisters are well?”

“They are, and thank you. I hope your sister is the same.”

“She is. We’re six. The three and three more, and we learn as well. He has something new. A shadow spell, a way to balance between worlds and forms. Your mother wrote something of shadows, and my Branna studies her book.”

“As does my sister. I’ll tell her of this. Or will you come in. I’ll wake her and Teagan as they’d be happy to meet you both.”

Eamon started to turn to the cottage door.

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