Page 43 of The Faerie Morgana
Nor had she the clothes to dress herself. She was helpless, about to revert to her own form, and she would be naked.
Braithe stood, irresolute, on the dock below the herb garden where she had promised to meet Morgana. She had Morgana’s shift and black robe over her arm and her sandals in her hand, ready to dress the priestess when she became herself, but something was making Braithe uneasy about all of it. It was an itch in her mind, a call that made no sense. She had tried to ignore it all day, but it refused to subside. As afternoon wore into evening, the itch grew more intense. The call seemed to grow louder, as if someone were screaming at her.
She wished for the hundredth time that she had deep sight. She had wondered, as she gathered up the clothes, if she should try one of the methods of divination she had seen Morgana and Niamh use, but she felt foolish for even considering it. Now she stood on the dock and fretted.
An empty rowboat bobbed against its tie rope, its oars shipped and ready. Braithe felt the tug of an impulse, arising to intensify her discomfort. Did she dare to climb into this boat, to row acrossIlyn, hoping to meet Morgana on the opposite shore? The usual fog encircled the Isle, and night was falling, but Braithe supposed that if she tried to row through it, she had a reasonable chance of going in the right direction. She refused to think about what would happen if she lost herself in the mist. She was no rower, but she was used to hard work, and the boat was small. The dark water was calm. Surely she could figure out how to pull the oars.
She palmed Morgana’s sigil, hanging at her breast, and argued with herself. What if Morgana made her way back and Braithe wasn’t waiting here as she had promised? But what if she was in trouble on the shore of Camulod?
Braithe paced up and down the dock, her shoulders tight with anxiety. She peered into the darkness in hopes of seeing Morgana in her man’s form, rowing toward her. Once she thought she heard the splash of an oar, but it was only a fish, leaping to snap at an errant fly.
The mist was too thick. The fish missed its prey, but in the ripples it made when it fell back into the water something appeared. It was vague, ghostly, not something Braithe saw with her eyes. It was some other part of her that perceived it. She couldn’t have called it a vision, precisely, but an image, something that spoke to her from deep in her mind.
Was this what it was like when Morgana stirred the ashes in the little divining bowl? She didn’t know. Braithe clutched Morgana’s robe to her, aching to understand.
It was a cat that she thought she saw in the water. It lay on the surface of the lake, a black cat barely visible in the shifting shadows. Its long tail curled around its paws, and its eyesflashed gold, looking directly at her for a heart-stopping instant until the ripples died away and the image dissolved.
Braithe had yearned for such a manifestation when she was an acolyte, still hoping her magic would show itself, would prove her worthy. There had been nothing then and nothing since. But this! What was this? Had she imagined it, calling it up out of her need? Was she dreaming?
Or was this—could it be—actual magic? If so, where had it come from? She had none of her own, everyone knew that, but…
Whatever it was, it was not done with her. A voice spoke in her mind. It was distant, but it was clear, and it was Morgana’s.Never deny your intuition.Braithe’s bones began to tingle as they always did when magic was close. She made up her mind on the instant. She threw the clothes and sandals into the rowboat and climbed in after them, bracing herself against the rocking as she settled onto the seat. She took up the oars, one and then the other, trying them in the water once, twice, three times, feeling their weight. Then she leaned toward the bollard, untied the rope, and let it fall in a mound at her feet.
She was clumsy with the oars at first. The boat wobbled away from the dock, moving awkwardly. It juddered and jerked as she tried to correct her direction, and she feared getting turned around in the growing darkness. She suffered a terrible moment of doubt about what she was doing. She glanced back and saw the shore receding into the gloom. She turned forward again, but she could see nothing past the ring of circling mist.
Then, as if a giant hand had taken hold of it, pushing orpulling, she couldn’t have said, the boat began to move. Braithe still tried to row. She dipped the paddles, pulled them against the weight of the water, lifted them dripping into the air, but it was not her strength that propelled the boat. She felt the power of whatever it was flex beneath her. The wooden boards creaked alarmingly with its pressure, and she hoped nothing would break. The boat swept forward on the still water, its bow lifting, its stern dipping low as it gathered speed. Braithe twisted her body to gaze ahead, her lips a little apart with amazement. She stopped rowing completely.
The little craft forded the mist without hesitation and broke out into the clear night air more swiftly than Braithe would have imagined possible. The bulk of Camulod on its promontory soon loomed above her head. The shore beckoned her to safety, to her goal.
It was the hand of the Lady, she had no doubt, reaching up from the lake to guide her. Even though she was no longer an acolyte, even though she had been deemed unworthy, the Lady was with her. Cared about her. Braithe’s heart swelled with gratitude and even, just a little, with pride.
As the boat bumped against the dock and Braithe climbed out to tie it up, she murmured her thanks for the power that had guided her here. “If you are fae, great Lady,” she whispered to the lake, “then the fae are not always evil.”
As if in answer, she felt one last thrill of magic run through her body, and shivered.
Braithe spotted the cat beneath the hawthorn bush exactly as she had seen it floating on the water. It was black, curled tightly, its tail tucked around its feet. When she lifted the cat in her arms, it opened its eyes, and they were the gold of Morgana’s. It nestled close to her chest, its sleek head warm against her shoulder, its long tail drooping over her arm.
As swiftly as she could, Braithe climbed back into the boat. She laid the cat gently on the pile of Morgana’s clothes and untied the rope from the bollard. She took up the oars, but again, she barely had to exert herself. The same feeling of propulsion, of the boat being in the control of other hands, overtook her, and she, the cat, and the boat set out swiftly from Camulod.
Braithe picked up the cat again to hold it close in her arms, warming it with her own body. She gazed blindly out into the darkness, trusting to the force that held them both in its care. Stars pricked the black sky and reflected from the dark water, so that Braithe felt as if she were suspended between the stars above and the stars below, sailing through a sea of them. They were more real than the nip of cool night air, than the hardness of the bench beneath her, than the soft slap of water against the boat’s sides. The cat curled safe in her arms, and the boat moved steadily beneath her. Had she not felt such a sense of urgency to allow the priestess to safely resume her own form, she could have enjoyed the voyage.
As the boat breached the circling mist, the cat began to change. Its legs lengthened. Its tail shrank and disappeared. It swiftly grew too big for Braithe to hold. She deposited itgingerly on the mound of clothes and watched as its glossy coat became a mane of shining black hair, as its paws became fingers and toes, as its legs stretched long and lean. It became a naked woman, still curled on the bottom of the boat, but definitely, fully human.
Braithe whispered, “Priestess? Are you all right?” And when there was no answer, “Morgana?”
Not until the boat reached the dock on the Isle of Apples did Morgana stir. Her eyelids fluttered open, and she muttered something Braithe couldn’t catch.
Dawn broke over the island as the boat pulled up to the dock. Hurriedly, Braithe tied it to the bollard before she put her hands under Morgana’s shoulders to coax her into a sitting position. Morgana shuddered helplessly, and although she tried to cooperate, her arms and legs were limp.
It took all of Braithe’s strength to pull Morgana from the rowboat. She was grateful there was no one about as she dragged her, bit by bit, up the dock. She worried about slivers, but there was nothing she could do about it. The priestess was too tall and too heavy for her to lift. Once on the shore, she managed with some difficulty to pull the shift over Morgana’s head and wriggle it down past her shoulders and over her body. The robe was easier, with its generous folds of fabric. She tied on the sandals, and then, murmuring encouragement, coaxed Morgana to her feet. Awkwardly, as she had once before, Braithe supported her in the slow climb up the slope, through the garden, and ontoward the residence. It was harder this time. Morgana seemed to make no effort at all, and it felt to Braithe as if she were supporting a lifeless body.
The acolytes were only just beginning to stir in the dormitory. The Temple was deserted, and Braithe hoped the priestesses were still in their rooms. By the time she guided Morgana into the residence and opened the door into her bedchamber, Braithe was shaking with effort.
She didn’t bother removing Morgana’s robe. She led her to the bed, where Morgana collapsed in an eerie silence that made Braithe’s heart clutch. “Rest, Priestess,” Braithe whispered. “I’ll bring some food.”
Morgana gave no response. Braithe untied her sandals and removed them, then pulled a blanket up to her shoulders. The priestess’s face was deathly pale. Her hair spilled over the pillow in tangled waves of disordered braids. Her closed eyelids trembled like the wings of a resting moth.
Braithe stood over her for a moment, loath to leave her alone but knowing she needed nourishment. Finally, she pulled the priestess’s sigil from her own neck and looped it around Morgana’s, where it belonged. “Keep her safe,” she whispered, and hurried out.
