Page 171 of A Winding Wave of Magic
Kiss thy love
To know thyself
She opened her eyes, which sparkled with knowledge. “There’s more, but that’s the heart of it. Calms the weans at night, teaches them not to act like wolf pups all the bleedin’ time.” She nodded at the bowl. “Put your hand in that, then.”
Touch the water.
I shook my head. “Caitlin says no coping mechanisms. Nothing to quiet my mind. We’re trying to open it. And then focus.”
“Have you ever tried to See when you’re in the water?” Aoife asked. “Instead of using it to make your visions go away?”
I opened my mouth to say no but realized I couldn’t. Gran’s mantra had always been a way to find silence, and so I’d always thought of water as an antidote. Nothing more.
“Try it,” Aoife urged. “Humor me.”
Cautiously, I dipped my fingers into the bowl. Once again, that gorgeous calm spread through me, slithering about my mind like a balm to the insanity I was constantly fighting off. It was cool and clean, and I was loath to let it go.
“Now touch the chair again. See what happens now.”
Hesitantly, I dropped my other hand to the chair arm. At first, nothing happened. The room remained still and quiet, with Caomhán and Aoife both watching me closely.
I shook my head in frustration. Why did it have to be this way? All or nothing. Chaos or perfect peace? I didn’t want much. Just to See the little girl. I wanted to know her story.
As if on command, the brown-haired girl in the blue pinafore bloomed in front of me, sitting on this very chair, along with a man with much darker hair that reached his shoulders crouched beside her.
His eyes weren’t gray like hers. Instead, they were a bright, oceanic blue I recognized. Like my own.
“Please, Da,” the girl begged, tears welling around her eyes as she clutched a dolly to her chest. “Please don’t go. Why do you have to go?”
“Aoife,” he hummed before kissing the girl’s head. “One day you’ll understand. Love is the most powerful thing in the universe, and my brother’s has disappeared. I must find them before they’re gone forever. Can you understand that,a stor?”
The girl hiccupped and nodded as she reached up to hug her father. Though she didn’t understand him. How could she?
“I’ll be back,” he said into her dark pigtails. “As soon as I can find my brother and Penny and bring her home, I’ll be back to see you. I promise.”
Before she could answer, the vision floated away. I looked down and realized my hand had risen from the chair arm just like hers. I pulled my other hand from the bowl of water.
“What did you See, then?” Aoife asked. She and her nephew traded glances. “Something sad, I’d wager. And familiar.” She sniffed. “Do you smell that?”
“Like Grandda,” Caomhán agreed. “Haven’t scented that for years.”
“It was you,” I said as I dropped both hands to my lap, my left fingertips still wet. “You’re the little girl in the blue pinafore. Oh, Aoife, I’m sorry you had to say goodbye to your father like that. Especially if—if my family had anything to do with it.”
Aoife’s hardened face softened slightly. “Oh, that. Well. It’s long past now.”
“Do you know what happened to him?” I wondered. “Did he ever find them?” I didn’t think so. My mother would have said something about her own uncle. Wouldn’t she?
Aoife shook her head. “No, he was killed a month after he left.”
“Murdered, more like it.”
Aoife looked up. “Caomhán, don’t start.”
“Don’t start what? You want to ignore the fact that the bleedin’ Council killed your father?”
“He fought arrest.”
“For being his fuckin’ self in front of one fuckin’ human!” Caomhán shouted. “Killed. What’s fair in that?”
