Shadow Spell

6

HE DREAMED OF THE BOY, AND SAT WITH HIM IN THE flickering light of a campfire ringed with rough gray stones. The moon hung full, a white ball swimming in a sea of stars. He smelled the smoke and the earth—and the horse. Not the Alastar that had been or was now, but a sturdy mare that stood slack-hipped as she dozed.
On a branch above the horse, the hawk guarded.
And he heard the night, all the whisperings of it in the wind.
The boy sat with his knees drawn in, and his chin upon them.
“I was sleeping,” he said.
“And I. Is this your time or mine?”
“I don’t know. But this is my home. Is it yours?”
Connor looked toward the ruins of the cabin, over to the stone marking Sorcha’s grave. “It’s ours, as it was hers. What do you see there?”
Eamon looked toward the ruins. “Our cabin, as we left it the morning my mother sent us away.”
“As you left it?”
“Aye. I want to go in, but the door won’t open for me. I know my mother’s not there, and we took all she told us to take. And still I want to go in as if she’d be there, by the fire waiting for me.”
Eamon picked up a long stick, poked at the fire as boys often do. “What do you see?”
It would hurt the boy’s heart to tell him he saw a ruin overgrown. And a gravestone. “I see you’re in your time, and I in mine. And yet . . .” He reached out, touched Eamon’s shoulder. “You feel my hand.”
“I do. So we’re dreaming, but not.”
“Power rules this place. Your mother’s and, I fear, Cabhan’s as well. We hurt him, you and I, so he brings no power here tonight. How long ago for you since we met?”
“Three weeks and five days more. For you?”
“Less. So the time doesn’t follow. Are you well, Eamon? You and your sisters?”
“We went to Clare, and we made a little cabin in the woods.” His eyes gleamed as he looked toward his home again. “We used magick. Our hands and backs as well, but we thought if we used magick we’d be safer. And dryer also,” he added with a ghost of a smile. “Brannaugh’s done some healing as we traveled, and now that we’re there. We have a hen for eggs, and that’s a fine thing, and we can hunt—all but Teagan, who can’t use the arrow on the living. It hurts her heart to try, but she tends the horses and the hen. We’ve traded a little—labor and healing and potions for potatoes and turnips, grain and such. We’ll plant our own when we can. I know how to plant and tend and harvest.”
“Come to me if you can, when you have need. It might be I can get you food, or blankets, whatever you need.”
Some comfort, Connor thought, for a sad young boy so far from home.
“Thank you for that, but we’re well enough, and have coin Ailish and Bardan gave us. But . . .”
“What? You’ve only to ask.”
“Could I have something of yours? Some small thing to take with me? I’ll trade you.” Eamon offered a stone, a cobble of pure white cupped like an egg in his palm. “It’s just a stone I found, but it’s a pretty one.”
“It is. I don’t know what I have.” Then he did, and reached up to take the thin leather strap with its spear of crystal from around his neck.
“It’s blue tiger eye—but also called hawk’s eye or falcon’s eye. My father gave it to me.”
“I can’t take it.”
“You can. He’s yours as I am. He’ll be pleased you have it.” To settle it, he put it around Eamon’s neck. “It’s a fine trade.”
Eamon fingered the stone, studied it in the firelight. “I’ll show my sisters. They were full of wonder and questions when I told of meeting you, and how we drove Cabhan away. And a bit jealous they were as well. They want to meet you.”
“And I them. The day may come. Do you feel him?”
“Not since that day. He can’t reach us now, Brannaugh said. He can’t go beyond his own borders, so he can’t reach us in Clare. We’ll go back when we’re grown, when we’re stronger. We’ll go home again.”
“I know you will, but you’ll be safe where you are until the time comes.”
“Do you feel him?”
“I do, but not tonight. Not here. You should rest,” he said when Eamon’s eyes drooped.
“Will you stay?”
“I will, as long as I can.”
Eamon curled up, wrapped his short cloak around him. “It’s music. Do you hear it? Do you hear the music?”
“I do, yes.” Branna’s music. A song full of heart tears.
“It’s beautiful,” Eamon murmured as he began to drift. “Sad and beautiful. Who plays it?”
“Love plays it.”
He let the boy sleep and watched the fire until he woke in his own bed with the sun slipping into the window.
When he opened his fisted hand, a smooth white stone lay in his palm.
He showed it to Branna when she came down to the kitchen for her morning coffee. The sleep daze vanished from her eyes.
“It came back with you.”
“We were both there, solid as we are standing here, but both in our own time. I gave him the hawk’s-eye stone Da gave me—do you remember it?”
“Of course. You used to wear it when you were a boy. It hangs on the frame of your bedroom mirror.”
“No longer. I wasn’t wearing it, or anything else, when I got into bed last night. But in the dream, I was dressed and it was around my neck. Now it’s around Eamon’s.”
“Each in your own time.” She went to the door to open it for Kathel, returned from his morning run. “Yet you sat together, spoke together. What he gave you came through the dream with you. We have to learn how to use this.”
She opened the fridge, and he saw as she pulled out butter, eggs, bacon, that the story, the puzzle of it, and her need to pick over the pieces would net him breakfast.
“We heard you playing.”
“What?”
“In the clearing. We heard you. Him so sleepy he could barely hold his eyes open. And the music came, your music, came to us. He fell asleep listening to you. Did you play last night?”
“I did, yes. I woke restless, and played for a bit.”
“We heard you. It carried all the way there from your room.”
He caught the flicker over her face as she set bacon to sizzle in the pan. “You weren’t in your room then. Where?”
“I needed some air. I just needed the night for a bit. I only went to the field behind the cottage. I felt I couldn’t breathe without the air and the music.”
“I wish you’d find a way to mend things with Fin.”
“Connor, don’t. Please.”
“I love you both. That’s all I’ll say for now.” He wandered the kitchen rubbing the little stone. “The field’s too far from the clearing for the music to carry, by ordinary means.”
He circled the kitchen as she sliced soda bread, as she broke eggs into the pan.
“We’re tied together. We three, those three. He heard your music. Twice now I’ve spoken to him. Iona saw Teagan.”
“And I’ve seen or heard none of them.”
Connor paused to pick up his coffee. “Eamon mentioned his sisters were jealous as well.”
“I’m not jealous. Well, a little, I admit. But it’s more frustrated, and maybe a bit insulted as well.”
“He took your music into dreams, and smiled as he slept when he’d been sad.”
“I’ll take that as something then.” She plated the bacon, the eggs she’d fried. Passed it to him.
“Aren’t you having some?”
“Just some coffee and toasted bread.”
“Well, thanks for the trouble.”
“You can pay it back with another favor.” She plucked toast out of the toaster, dropped one piece on his plate, and another on a smaller one. “Carry the stone he gave you.”
“This?” He’d already put it in his pocket, and now drew it out.
“Carry it with you, Connor, as you wear the amulet. There’s power in it.”
She took her toast and coffee to the table, waiting for him to sit with her. “I don’t know, can’t be sure if it’s suspicion, intuition, or a true knowing, but there’s power in it. Good magicks because of where it came from, when it came from, who it came from.”
“All right. I’ll hope the hawk’s eye does the same for Eamon, and his sisters.”
* * *
IT WASN’T ALL HAWK WALKS WITH EAGER TOURISTS OR giving tours to school groups. An essential part of the school involved care and training. Clean mews, clean water for baths, weight checks and a varied diet, sturdy lean-tos for weathering the birds so they might feel the air, smell it. Connor prided himself on the health, behavior, and reliability of his birds—those he helped raise from hatchlings, those who came to him as rescues.
He didn’t mind cleaning the poo, or the time it took to carefully dry a wet bird’s wings, the hours of training.
The hardest part of his job was, and always would be, selling a bird he’d trained to another falconer.
As arranged, he met the customer in a field about ten kilometers from the school. The farmer he knew well allowed him to bring the young hawks he trained to hunt to that open space.
He called the pretty female Sally, and tethered her to his glove to walk her about and talk to her.
“Now Fin’s met this lady who wants you to be hers, and he’s even seen your new home should the two of you get along. She’s coming all the way from Clare. And there, I’m told, she has a fine house and a fine mews. She’s done her training as well as you have yours. You’ll be her first.”
Sally watched him with her gold eyes, and preened on his fist.
He watched the spiffy BMW navigate the road, pull to a stop behind his truck.
“Here she is now. I expect you to be polite, make a good impression.”
He put on his own game face, though his eyebrows rose a bit when the willowy blonde with a film star’s face stepped out of the car.
“Is it Ms. Stanley then?”
“Megan Stanley. Connor O’Dwyer?”
The second surprise was the Yank in her voice. Fin hadn’t mentioned that either.
“We’re pleased to meet you.”
Sally, as advised, behaved well, merely standing quiet and watching.
“I didn’t realize you were an American.”
“Guilty.” She smiled as she walked toward Connor, and earned a point or two by studying the hawk first. “Though I’ve lived in Ireland for nearly five years now—and intend to stay. She’s beautiful.”
“She is that.”
“Fin told me you raised and trained her yourself.”
“She was born in the school in the spring. She’s a bright one, I’ll tell you that. She manned in no time at all. Hopped right on the glove and gave me a look that said, ‘Well then, what now?’ I have her file with me—health, weight, feeding, training. Did you hawk in America?”
“No. My husband and I moved to Clare—just outside of Ennis—and a neighbor has two Harris’s Hawks. I’m a photographer, and started taking photos of them, became more and more interested. So he trained me, then helped me design the mews, the weathering area, get supplies. By his rules I wasn’t to so much as think about getting a bird until I’d spent at least a year preparing.”
“That’s best for all.”
“It’s taken more than two, as there was a gap when my husband moved back to the States and we divorced.”
“That’s . . . difficult for certain.”
“Not as much as it might’ve been. I found my place in Clare, and another passion in falconry. I did considerable research before I contacted Finbar Burke. You and your partner have a terrific reputation with your school.”
“He’s my boss, but—”
“That’s not how he put it. When it comes to hawks or birds of prey, you want the eye, ear, hand, and heart of Connor O’Dwyer.” She smiled again, and the film-star face illuminated. “I’m pretty sure that’s a direct quote. I’d love to see her fly.”
“We’re here for that. I call her Sally, but if the match between you seems right, you’ll call her what suits you.”
“No bells, no transmitter?”
“She doesn’t need them here, as she knows these fields,” Connor said as he released the jesses. “But you’ll want them back in Clare.”
He barely shifted his arm, and Sally lifted, spread her wings. Soared.
He saw the reaction he wanted, had hoped for in Megan’s eyes. The awe that was a kind of love.
“You have a glove with you, I see. You should put it on, call her back yourself.”
“I didn’t bring a baiting pouch.”
“She doesn’t need baiting. If she’s decided to give you a go, she’ll come.”
“Now I’m nervous.” Her laugh showed it as she took her glove from her jacket pocket, drew it on. “How long have you been doing this?”
“Always.” He watched the flight of the bird, sent his thoughts. If you want this, go to her.
Sally circled, dove. And landed pretty as a charm on Megan’s glove.
“Oh, you beauty. Fin was right. I won’t go home without her.”
And, Connor thought, she would never come to him again. “Do you want to see her hunt?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Just let her know she can. Do you not talk to the birds, Ms. Stanley?”
“Megan, and yes, I do.” Now her smile turned speculative as she studied Connor. “It’s not something I admit to most. All right, Sally—she’ll stay Sally—hunt.”
The hawk rose, circled high. Connor began to walk the field with Megan, following the flight.
“So what brought you to Ireland, and to Clare?” he asked her.
“An attempt to save a marriage, which it didn’t. But I think it saved me, and I’m happy with that. So it’s just me and Bruno—and now Sally.”
“Bruno?”
“My dog. Sweet little mutt who showed up at my door a couple years ago. Mangy, limping, half starved. We adopted each other. He’s used to hawks. He doesn’t bother my neighbor’s.
“A dog’s an asset on a hunt. Not that she needs one.” As he spoke, Sally dove—a bullet from a gun. As talons flashed, Megan let out a little hiss.
“Gets me every time. It’s what they do, need to do. God or the world or whatever you believe in made them to hunt and feed. But I always feel a little sorry about it. It took some time for me to stop being squeamish about feeding them during molting, but I got over that. Have you always lived in Mayo?”
“Always, yes.”
They exchanged some small talk—weather, hawking, a pub in Ennis he knew well—while Sally feasted on the small rabbit she’d taken down.
“I’m half in love with her already.” Megan lifted her arm, and the hawk responded, flying over to land. “Some of that’s just excitement and anticipation, but I think we’ll make that match you spoke of. Will you let me have her?”
“You made arrangements with Fin,” Connor began.
“Yeah, I did, but he said it would be up to you.”
“She’s yours already, Megan.” He looked from the hawk to the woman. “Else she wouldn’t have come to you after her feed. You’ll want to take her home.”
“Yes, yes. I brought everything, with my fingers crossed for luck. I nearly brought Bruno but thought they should get acquainted before a car trip.”
She looked at Sally, laughed. “I have a hawk.”
“And she has you.”
“And she has me. And I think she’ll always have you, so would you mind if I took a picture of you with her?”
“Ah, sure if you’re wanting.”
“My camera’s in my car.” She transferred Sally to Connor, dashed back to her car. And returned with a very substantial Nikon.
“That’s quite the camera.”
“And I’m good with it. Go to my website and see for yourself. I’m going to take a couple, okay?” she continued as she checked setting and light. “Just relax—I don’t want a studied pose. We’ll have the young Irish god with Sally, queen of the falcons.”
And when Connor laughed, she took three shots, fast.
“Perfect. Just one more with you looking at her.”
Obliging, he looked at Sally. You’ll be happy with her, he told the hawk. She’s been waiting for you.
“Great. Thanks.” She slung the camera around her neck. “I’ll email you the best of them if you want.”
“Sure I’d like that very much.” He dug out one of the business cards he’d remembered to stick in his back pocket.
“And here’s one of mine. My website’s on it. And I wrote my personal email on the back when I got my camera. In case you have any questions or follow-ups about . . . Sally.”
“That’s grand.” He slipped it into his pocket.
Shortly, after helping Megan settle Sally in her container for the trip, Connor climbed back in his lorry.
“That’s grand? That’s all you have to say about it?” He cast his eyes to heaven as he drove. “What’s come over you, O’Dwyer? The woman was gorgeous, single, clever, and a keen hawker. And she gave you an open door a kilometer wide. But did you walk through it? You didn’t, no. ‘That’s grand’ is all you said, and let that open door sit there.”
Was it simply distraction, the burden of what he knew would have to be done, and the not knowing when it could or would be done? But it had always been there, hadn’t it, in the back of all? And had never interfered with his romantic maneuverings.
Had it all changed so much after the solstice? He knew he’d never known fear as sharp as when he’d seen Boyle’s hands burning, seen Iona on the ground bruised and bloody. When he’d known the lives of all of them depended on all of them.
Ah well, he thought, perhaps it was best to stay unentangled from those romantic maneuvers for a bit longer. No reason at all he couldn’t walk through that open door at a later date.
But for now, he needed to swing by the big stables, let Fin know the deal was done. Then his sister expected him, as this was, at least in theory, his free day.
He stopped at the stables where Fin made his home in the fancy stone house with a hot tub big as a pond on the back terrace and a room on the second floor where he kept magickal weapons, books, and everything else a witch might need—especially one determined to destroy a dark sorcerer of his own blood.
Beside it stood the garage with the apartment over it where Boyle lived—and where Iona would. And the barn for the horses—some for breeding, some for use at the working stables not far off.
Some of the horses cropped in the paddock beyond the one set for jumping practice and lessons.
He spotted Meara, which surprised him, leading one out.
He hopped down from the lorry to greet Bugs, the cheerful mutt who made the barn his home, then hailed her.
“I’d hoped to see Fin, but didn’t expect to see you.”
“I’m fetching Rufus. Caesar was on the slate for guides today, but Iona says he’s got a bit of a strain—left foreleg.”
“Nothing serious, I hope.”
“She says not.” She looped Rufus’s reins around the fence. “But we agreed to give him a bit of rest and keep an eye. Fin’s round and about somewhere. I thought this was your free day.”
“It is, but I had to meet a customer over at Mulligan’s farm. She bought Sally—one from the brood we had last spring.”
“And you’re a bit sulky over it.”
“I’m not sulky.”
“A bit,” Meara said, and bent to give Bugs a scratch. “It’s hard to raise a living thing, connect and bond with it, then give it to another. But you can’t keep them all.”
“I know it”—though he wished otherwise—“and it’s a good match. Sally took to her right off, I could see it.”
“She?”
“A Yank, moved here a few years ago, and intends to stay—even after her husband, now her former husband, moved back.”
Meara’s lips curved; her eyebrows lifted. “A looker, is she?”
“She is. Why?”
“No why, just I could hear it in your voice. Living hereabouts?”
“No, down in Clare. Still squeamish over the hunt, but a good hand and heart with the hawk. I thought I’d let Fin know we made the deal, then I’m off to home to work with Branna, as I promised.”
“I’m off as well.” She unlooped the reins. “Since you’ll talk to Branna before I do, tell her Iona’s after a trip to Galway City to look for a wedding dress, and soon.”
“That’s months off yet.”
“Only six, and a bride wants to find her dress before she digs into the rest of it.”
“Will they live there, do you think?”
Meara paused in the act of mounting, glanced toward Boyle’s rooms over the garage. “Where else? I don’t see them trying to squeeze the pair of them into Iona’s room at the cottage for the long term.”
He realized he’d miss her—or more them as it was now. Talk over breakfast, conversation before bed whenever the two of them stayed at the cottage.
“Boyle’s place is bigger than a single room, but sure it’s not big when you add children.”
“You’re jumping some steps ahead,” Meara observed.
“Not for the likes of Boyle and Iona.” Idly, he stroked the horse as he studied what Fin had built for himself—and for others as well. “They’ll want a house of their own, won’t they, not a couple of rooms over a garage.”
“I hadn’t thought of it. They’ll figure it.” She swung onto Rufus. “For now she’s thinking bridal dresses and bouquets, as she should be. There’s Fin now, with Aine.”
She studied the beautiful white filly Fin led out of the barn. “Soon to be a bride herself when we breed her with Alastar.”
“No white dress and bouquet for her.”
“But she’ll get the stud, and for some of us that’s fine and enough.”
She rode off on Connor’s laugh. And he watched her nudge Rufus into a lope as smooth as butter before walking over to meet Fin.
His friend crouched down to give Bugs a rub, smiling as the dog wagged everywhere and made growls in his throat.
Talking to the dog, Connor knew, as he himself did with hawks, Iona with horses, Branna with hounds. Whatever ran in Fin’s blood meant he could talk to all.
“Has he complaints then?” Connor wondered.
“He’s only hoping I didn’t forget this.” Fin reached in the pocket of his leather coat for a little dog biscuit. Bugs sat, stared up with soulful eyes.
“You’re a fine boy and there’s your reward.”
Bugs took it delicately before trotting off in triumph.
“Takes little to please him,” Connor commented.
“Well, he loves his life and would choose no other. A man would be lucky to feel the same.”
“Are you lucky, Fin?”
“Some days. But it takes more than a hard biscuit and a bed in a barn to content me. But then, I have more,” he added and stroked Aine’s throat.
“Sure she’s the most beautiful filly I’ve seen in my life.”
“And knows it well. But then modesty in a beautiful female’s usually of the false sort. I’m after riding her over, letting her and Alastar gander at each other. So how did you find Megan?”
“Another beauty for certain. They took to each other, her and Sally. She gave me the payment on the spot.”
“I thought they would.” He nodded, didn’t glance at the check Connor handed him, just shoved it in his pocket. “She’ll be back for another in a month or two.”
Now Connor smiled. “I thought the same.”
“And you? Will you be traveling to Clare to visit them?”
“It crossed my mind. I think no, and can only think I think no because there’s too much else crossing my mind.” Connor shoved fingers through his breeze-tossed hair. “I wake each morning thinking of it, and him. I never used to.”
“We hurt him, but he hurt us as well. We nearly didn’t get through to Iona in time. None of us will be forgetting that. For all we had together, it wasn’t enough. He won’t forget that.”
“We’ll have more next round. I’m going to work with Branna.” Lightly, he laid a hand on Fin’s arm. “You should come with me.”
“Not today. She won’t want me round today when she’s thinking it’ll just be the two of you together.”
“Branna won’t let her feelings get in the way of what must be done.”
“That’s God’s truth,” Fin agreed, and swung himself into the saddle. He let Aine dance a bit. “We have to live, Connor. Despite it, because of it, around it, through it. We have to live as best we can.”
“You think he’ll beat us?”
“I don’t. No, he won’t beat you.”
Deliberately, Connor slid a hand onto Aine’s bridle, looked into Fin’s stormy green eyes. “Us. It’s us, Fin, and will always be us.”
Fin nodded. “He won’t win. But before the battle, and bitter and bloody it’s bound to be, we have to live. I might choose another life if I could, but I’ll make the most of the one I have. I’ll come to the cottage soon.”
He let Aine have her head, thundered away.
With his mood mixed and unsteady, Connor drove straight to the cottage. The light filtered through the windows of Branna’s workshop, bounced over the colored bottles she displayed that held her creams and lotions, serums and potions. Her collection of mortars and pestles, her tools, the candles and plants she set about were all arranged just so.
And Kathel sprawled in front of her work counter like a guard while she sat at it, her nose in the thick book he knew to have been Sorcha’s.
The fire in the hearth simmered, as did something in a pot on her work stove.
Another beauty, he thought—it seemed he was surrounded by them—with her dark hair pulled back from her face, her sweater rolled up at the sleeves. Her eyes, gray as the smoke puffing from the chimney, lifted to his.
“There you are. I thought you’d be here long before this. Half the day’s gone.”
“I had things to see to, as I told you clear enough.”
Her brows lifted. “What’s bitten your arse?”
“At the moment, you are.”
No, his mood wasn’t mixed, he realized. It had tipped over to foul. He stalked to the jar on the counter beside the stove. There were always biscuits, and he was slightly mollified to find the soft, chewy ones she rolled in cinnamon and sugar.
“I’m here when I could get here. I had the hawk sale to deal with.”
“Was it a favorite of yours— Never mind, they all are. You have to be realistic, Connor.”
“I’m bloody realistic. I sold the hawk, and the buyer was beautiful, available, and interested. I’m bloody realistic enough to know I had to come back here for you and this, else I’d be having myself a good shag.”
“If a shag’s so bleeding important, go get it done.” Eyes narrowed, she fired right back at him. “I’d rather work alone than with you pacing about horny and bitter.”
“It’s that it wasn’t so bleeding important, hasn’t been so bleeding important since before the solstice that worries me.” He stuffed one cookie in his mouth, wagged the other in the air.
“I’m making you some tea.”
“I don’t want any f*cking tea. Yes, I do.” He dropped down onto one of the stools at her work counter, rubbed Kathel when the dog laid his great head against Connor’s leg. “It’s not the shag or the woman or the hawk. It’s all of it. All of this. All of it, and I let it bite me in the arse.”
“Some days I want to climb up on the roof and scream. Scream at everyone and everything.”
Calmer, Connor bit into the second biscuit. “But you don’t.”
“Not so far, but it could come to it. We’ll have some tea, then we’ll work.”
He nodded. “Thanks.”
She trailed her fingers over his back as she walked around him to the stove. “We’ll have good days and bad until it’s done, but until it’s done we have to live as best we can.”
He stared at the back of her head as she put on the kettle, and decided not to tell her Fin had said the very same.