Page 3 of The Faerie Morgana
With rain streaking her cheeks and spilling over her chilled hands, little Morgana felt a tearing in her breast, a sensation she had never before experienced. It was the shock of the vision, the disbelief at being rejected by her mother, the soul-deep sorrow of being torn from her home, her bedchamber, her nurse. No one had told her where she was going, or what she would do there, or if anyone would care for her. No one had promised she would soon return to the home of her heart. It would have been a lie, but it might have comforted her.
It would be many years before she returned to Camulod. She never saw her mother again.
2
Braithe had known, since very soon after she came to the Lady’s Temple as a child, that she would never be one of the Nine. She had no deep sight, not then, and not now when she was twelve, an age by which her teachers said any who possessed the gift would have shown evidence. She was clumsy with potions. She was an attentive student, an obedient child, and a pretty girl, but her tinctures were weak, her salves runny, and her potions cloudy. She had an excellent memory for the stanzas she and the acolytes had to learn, but except for that, she had no special gifts.
Except loyalty. Loyalty Braithe possessed in abundance.
When eight-year-old Braithe had disembarked from the rowboat that brought her across Ilyn, through the curtain of mist to the dock below the Temple garden, she hardly looked back at the older brother who had delivered her to the Isle. He called a farewell that she barely heard. She was staring, open-mouthed, at the wonderland that was the Isle of Apples.
Everything about it seemed magical to Braithe. The trees surrounding the Temple were tall and dark, beribboned with sheetsof moss in a green so dark it was nearly black. The sky above seemed bluer than it had above her home, and the fascinating scents of unfamiliar herbs, plants that didn’t grow on her mother’s croft, tickled her nose. Flowers of every description bloomed in sunny patches where the shade didn’t reach. Butterflies abounded, and the birds seemed to sing enchanted songs. Rabbits peeked from beneath the undergrowth, pink noses twitching at the little girl gazing back at them. Squirrels danced along tree branches and fled up the trunks, their fluffy tails aloft.
Braithe trudged up the hill, past a stone bench, on through beautifully tended garden beds, until she could see the Temple. It was huge. Its doors stood open to the summer air, so Braithe could see the thick pillars that held up the roof, and the floor of flagstones set into packed earth. A large stone rested in the center of the space, and beyond it stood a semicircle of tall chairs with elaborately carved backs and wide armrests. Braithe counted them on her fingers. Nine. They were empty at the moment, but she knew what they were for. All the common folk knew about the nine priestesses of the Lady’s Temple.
As she tiptoed closer, barely breathing for awe, she saw that what she had taken for pillars were standing stones, like the ones in the field near her mother’s cottage. She couldn’t imagine how these great thick fingers of rock had come to be on the Isle. They had to be heavier than any ten men could lift. And what boat could bear their weight?
All of it spoke of magic and mystery, and Braithe thrilled to it. Surely the Isle of Apples was every bit as wondrous as the White City of the fae was said to be!
What struck her most, not only in the Temple but in the buildings attached to it, was the abundance of space. She had just left a cottage where far too many people lived in one cramped house, where she felt she could hardly breathe, and this—this grand building—was so spacious that her entire family, mother and siblings, their cow, and all their sheep could have fitted inside and had room left over.
A woman in a black robe appeared at the crest of the little hill and beckoned to her. Braithe transferred her rapt gaze to the gray-haired, beak-nosed woman, not knowing how to behave with her. Was this one of them? One of the priestesses? The sense of magic intensified so that she barely remembered to close her mouth as she approached her. The magical feeling dissipated the moment the woman spoke. In a voice as shrill as the caw of a crow, she snapped, “Name?”
Braithe, seized by a sudden spasm of nerves, stammered, “B-B-Braithe?” as if her name were in doubt.
“Do you have a purse?”
Braithe blinked. “A—a purse?”
She had never had a purse. She didn’t think anyone in her family had ever had one. What would they put in it? She had never, in all her eight years, held a coin in her hand, or bought something from a vendor. They were cottars, her mother, her siblings. They only ate food they grew or caught. They labored every day in the fields, and their reward was a place to sleep. She wore clothes that had been worn by older sisters, and would be worn again by younger ones.
A purse? No.
The beak-nosed woman snorted. “Another one begging the Temple’s generosity!”
Braithe said nothing. She had no idea what the woman meant. She had been sent by her mother because there were too many hungry mouths at home, and the local headman had advised giving Braithe to the Temple as tribute.
The gray-haired woman seized Braithe’s hand and pulled her away from the view of the Temple and toward a low, windowless building that sprawled to their left. Braithe trotted alongside the woman, her cheeks burning with embarrassment as other girls, mostly older, certainly taller, stopped what they were doing to stare at her.
They went into a long room where dozens of pallets stood in rows. The woman took Braithe’s bag and tossed it onto one of the pallets. “That’s yours,” she said. “One of the acolytes will bring you a robe.” She paused, hands on her hips, wrinkled lips pursed. She peered down her impressive nose at Braithe, who gazed back, her eyes stretched wide with confusion. The woman snorted again as she turned away. “Let us hope you’re brighter than you look.”
Braithe had no idea if she was bright, and it had never occurred to her that she might or might not look as if she were. She had spent the scant years of her life until that moment worrying about whether she and her siblings would have enough to eat, or clothes warm enough to fend off the fierce bite of winter.
She soon learned that at least she would have plenty to eat onthe Isle of Apples. She also learned that the woman who had brought her to the dormitory was Priestess Iffa, and she picked on all the acolytes. It was not just Braithe who Iffa thought had no promise, but most of them. There was only one acolyte who stood out, who exhibited special gifts, and Priestess Iffa resented her with as much energy as she despised the others.
Braithe, once she accepted that she herself had no magic, attached herself to that one.
Everyone believed Morgana was destined to be one of the Nine. She was four years older than Braithe. Tall and lean, with straight black hair that gleamed blue in the sun, she had knowing eyes that were as much gold as brown. They slanted slightly upward at the corners, like those of a cat.
Braithe admired her from a distance, as most of the younger girls did. Morgana seemed to be always solitary, walking alone, working alone. Everyone assumed she preferred it that way. Morgana was so far above them all, so remote and mysterious, that Braithe was startled to find her at her shoulder one morning in the workroom.
Braithe had been staring helplessly at the goldenseal and mint she was trying to crush with a small mortar and pestle. It lay in a crumbly mass in the bottom of the mortar, and no matter how she tried to wield the pestle with her short fingers, the leaves and stems would not give way.
Feeling the presence of someone behind her, she dropped her head to hide the tears building in her throat. It would surely be Priestess Iffa, always quick with a scathing remark, or it could be one of the instructors, less sharp-tongued but still critical.Braithe didn’t think she could bear another dressing-down in front of all the acolytes laboring at the worktables. They would add the moment to the many things they teased her about: her country accent, her freckles, her unruly curls, which she could never pull a comb through.
When she heard Morgana’s deep voice, Braithe startled and dropped her pestle with a bump. “Come now, little one,” Morgana murmured. She reached past Braithe with her long arm, picked up the pestle, and nestled it back into her fingers. “Let me help you.”
Braithe hardly breathed as she felt Morgana’s long fingers wrap around her own, guiding the movement of the pestle in a circular motion, pressing and grinding, stirring, then pressing again. As if by magic—or perhaps, as it was Morgana, it was truly magic—the stubborn herbs dissolved into the paste they were meant to become.
