Page 7 of The Faerie Morgana
Braithe picked up her ladle again. “Your recognition of the obvious impresses me, Freda. We’ve all known that for a long time. There are other ways to serve, as our teachers are always telling us. Perhaps you should be considering them yourself.”
“Perhaps your Morgana should!”
At that, Braithe spun around, and the hot liquid on her ladle splashed over Freda’s robe. “Use your head!” she snapped. She tossed a cloth at Freda to sponge the witch hazel reduction from her skirt. “Morgana’s gifts are too rare to be wasted! Even you, jealous as you are, can understand that.”
“Gifts?” Freda said, scrubbing at the spots on her robe. “Or curses?”
“What do you mean, curses?”
Freda tossed the cloth back to Braithe, and her thin lips curled in a sneer. “What human woman does the things she does? Moving things with her mind. Seeing things in the fog. Lighting a candle with her fingertips.”
Braithe felt the constriction in her throat that too often led to tears. She tried to swallow it away, to speak lightly. To hide her worry. “Of course Morgana is a human woman! What else would she be?”
Freda leaned close to her to whisper, “Fae, that’s what!”
Braithe turned away, unable to stop the tears that filled her eyes. When she was growing up, faerie was everywhere, and everyone feared it. Her mam made offerings to the fae every time she crossed a stream, every time she took her sheep out on the moor, every time she went up the fell in search of blackberries. She left pinches of salt, or a bit of bread, or a few leaves of tea on a scrap of fabric.
Everyone in her village knew the fae had to be placated, teased into being helpful. Their anger was a fearsome thing; they might lure sheep away or trick humans into terrible accidents just to watch them suffer. They would steal babies from their mothers and carry them away to fae country. They might maim someone who offended them. They took lovers and sucked the life from them. Parents threatened their children with the fae when they misbehaved, and said the faeries would come in the night and punish them just for the fun of it. Braithe’s mother, when she was angry or frustrated, would accuse Braithe or one of her siblings of being changelings, and demand to have her real child back. When someone in the village went missing, everyone whispered grimly that the faeries had taken them, and they would never be seen again. Sometimes they were wrong, but too often, the person who vanished had disappeared for good.
It had been Braithe’s great surprise here on the Isle to learn that everyone believed the fae had disappeared from Lloegyr. None of the living priestesses had been to fae country. They had never seen the White City. Their teaching was that the Ladyhad been the last of her kind. No one could do what she did. No one was left who could wield her magic, and anyone who pretended to was a heretic. They said the Lady had banished the fae from Lloegyr for their evil ways, so for Freda to accuse Morgana of being fae was a terrible thing to say.
Braithe sniffled and wiped her eyes with the hem of her work apron. At the next table, one of her friends gave her a sympathetic smile. She nodded, accepting the comfort, but the insult to Morgana hurt as if it had been meant for herself.
The Blackbird settled into the chair the priestesses’ servant, Dafne, set for him. She didn’t speak—she never spoke—but she held his arm as he lowered himself onto the cushioned seat. He was grateful for the padding she had provided. His ancient bones were going to ache before this was over. The wrangling among the priestesses would go on for hours. He had known such conclaves to last for days.
He allowed his stiff back to relax in the chair as Dafne relieved him of his staff and brought him a cup of cider. The priestesses sat in a semicircle, in chairs similar to his own, but without the comfort of a cushion or the luxury of cider. Dafne, the Blackbird thought, had long ago decided that excessive comfort should be eschewed in favor of swifter resolutions.
He watched her move around the room. There was a rumor that Dafne had been abducted by the fae as a child, and they had stolen her voice to give to someone else. It was as good an explanation as any for her silence, he supposed. It was temptingto blame the fae for every misfortune, but as he knew from his own time in fae country, so long ago, that was not always fair.
He allowed himself to wonder, briefly, if he would ever again see the sparkling lights of the White City, or walk its pale stone paths. He had not intended to go there, nor to stay as long as he had, but now he sometimes found himself longing to return, to immerse himself in the magic and power of that place.
He brushed these thoughts aside. There was work to do.
On a low table in the center of the circle, the tools of divination waited. Three candles of different sizes rested in stone holders. A flat pottery dish held a scattering of leaves to be burned so the ashes could be read. There was a small leather cup full of lake pebbles, white and black, that would be poured out into patterns to be studied. There was a cunningly fashioned metal gong, suspended in a little square of polished wood. A small mallet lay beneath it, ready to strike when the decision was reached.
The most sacred of the ritual objects was a tiny wand, barely longer than one of Morgana’s long fingers, and about as thick. It had been carved of bogwood and was believed to have belonged to the Lady herself, lifetimes ago. None of the living priestesses would presume to try to use it, and they were correct. It was not meant for them.
Only the Blackbird knew who had the right to pick up that wand, but something in his spirit told him it was too soon for her. He feared that if she came into the circle when she was not ready, tragedy would follow. The gravity of that premonition added to the bulk of lifetimes of knowledge he carried, some tobe passed on, some to be held close. He felt on this day that he might crumble under the weight of it all, simply collapse from exhaustion.
He wouldn’t do that, of course. He had felt this way before. Once this decision was made, it would pass. He would be relieved when the wand was restored to its chest and he could put aside the memories it stirred up.
As Niamh raised her earth-stained hand to begin, he couldn’t help thinking how relieved he would be when he could pass on this duty to someone else. When he could rest at last.
But that was disloyal, and he thrust the thought aside. Lloegyr had need of him. Camulod depended on him. The Lady had planned it that way, had chosen him for this purpose. Had made him swear a solemn vow that he would keep his secrets until the time was right.
He felt pressure on every side, tricky choices that needed to be made. A point of balance, however uneasy, had to be found between the old power and the new.
And on which side of that fulcrum did Morgana have her place? He wished he knew.
4
Morgana felt as if her entire body were stretched taut, as if her muscles were ropes being pulled, her flesh a fabric pressed too thin. She watched the Blackbird enter the priestesses’ residence, and Dafne shut the door firmly behind him. She stood for another moment, gazing at that closed door, then spun toward the lake and her favorite short beach with its litter of gray boulders. She needed to stretch her legs, swing her arms, gaze upon the natural things that gave them all their strength—trees, water, plants, birds, fish.
She felt Braithe’s presence just behind her, and she breathed a bit easier. Braithe had become the little sister she had never had, filled a void she hadn’t known was there. She barely knew her half brother Arthur, and there was an even younger brother, little Mordred, born to Uther’s second wife, but she had never laid eyes on the boy. She had resigned herself to being alone, until Braithe came along.
When she had stepped in to help Braithe, remembering how hurtful Iffa’s criticisms could be, she had been delighted to find the girl bright and eager, the perfect apprentice. Seeing Braithegrow in confidence and ability had eased her own painful memories of those early days on the Isle.
Morgana didn’t look back at Braithe until they had passed through the sparse woods beyond the herb garden. At the lake’s edge, she kicked off her sandals, leaving them on the pebbly shore, and lifted the hem of her robe to wade ankle-deep into the frigid water. With her skirts looped over one arm, she turned and beckoned. “Join me.”
