“I will.” He stepped in. “You are priestess tonight. Call.”
Fallon’s throat went dry as she lit a black candle. “Dark Mother, goddess of death and rebirth, hear your servant who honors you. I ask your blessing. At this place, in this hour, I call you to use your power. Lift the veil between the worlds so those who came before hear our words.”
She lit the next. “Dark Father, Lord of the Underworld, hear your servant who honors you. I ask your blessing. At this place, in this hour, I call you to use your power. Guard and protect as the veil thins, keep safe all without and within.”
“And the flames rise,” Mallick said, “as the goddess and her consort hear you.”
She felt power, flickers of it like the candle flames—tiny burns that brought both pleasure and pain. Without Mallick’s bidding, she continued, speaking words that simply came to her mind, her heart, her tongue.
“On this night, with this light, embracing dark its counterpart, we welcome spirits with full heart. All from world to world did pass, we offer our hand to grasp until with daybreak you depart.”
She stepped forward, took the apple and bolline, cutting the fruit crossways, exposing the symbolic pentagram within. After taking a small bite from one half, she placed them in the cauldron, added herbs, bits of bread, wine from the chalice, and struck the flame beneath with her hand.
Taking the wand, she lifted it, thrust her power into it so it shot stars through the smoke.
“Here an offering to all who come, with love to all and hate toward none. And this light, burn bright through the night your steps to guide while you abide.”
Did she feel the wind stir? Mallick wondered. Did she feel the breath of the gods on her?
“Here, Dark Mother, cauldron of death and rebirth, one of Air, one of Earth. Dark Father, blade of protection, blade of blood both strong and keen, if I am what you have foreseen, take mine.”
She took the athame, scored her palm, let her blood drip into the cauldron.
To Mallick’s dazzled eyes, light burst from it, showered over the altar, turned the circle into sunlight.
“Blood of your blood, blood of mine here in tribute they entwine. As slowly dies the year, living and dead have much to fear. Your light, my light, light of those spirits passed and yet to be, I call you now to join with me to fight the dark, to make our mark. If I am your child, inhabit me. As you will, so mote it be.”
She set down the wand as it went quiet. Taking her braid in one hand, she sliced it off with the athame. “And here I make my pledge. And here, a symbol of the child rising to warrior.”
She let out a long, long sigh. The light of the cauldron ebbed to a quiet glow. The candles that had speared up like torches slipped into gentle flickers in the dark.
With his skin still tingling, his heart still drumming, Mallick stepped toward her. When he laid a hand on her shoulder, she jolted as if she’d awakened from sleep, or a trance.
And so, he thought, she had.
She stared at him, her eyes dark and dazed.
“It was … all through me, all over me.”
“Yes, I know.”
“At first it was what I knew from Mom, or mostly. But then … it was just what I knew, and it got stronger and stronger. I feel a little sick.”
“It was a great deal all at once.” Without thinking, he picked up the chalice, offered it.
She sipped, and the child of thirteen made a face of pure disgust. “What is that?”
Amused, he shook his head. “It’s just wine. A sip won’t hurt you. We’ll close the circle, and you can have a little food, some water, rest.”
“I feel all …” She stopped, staring with dismay and horror at the braid still in her hand. “I cut my hair.”
“Yes.”
“I cut my hair off. Why didn’t you stop me?”
“Girl, I’m not certain the power of the gods could have stopped you.”
“But my hair.”
“Will grow again. Can you close the circle?”
“Yeah, I can do it.”
When it was done, he heated a little of the soup they’d had for supper. Though she only ate a few spoonsful, she drank water like a camel.
“You offered your blood.”
She frowned down at her palm, unmarked. “Did you heal it?”
“No. I might have stopped you from the sacrifice, the symbol and power of it, if I’d known your intent. I would have been wrong. Your offering was well received.”
She reached back to the ends of her shorn hair. “I guess.”
“You honored the gods, honored the ancestors, and you made a pledge.”
“It was like I was somebody else, but not. Like I knew what I was doing, but didn’t.”
“I can help you know, and will. You made a pledge. You’ve made your choice, for good and all?”
She poked at the soup. “I guess I made it when I unpacked. I’m afraid.”
“You’d be foolish not to be. But know you did well tonight. And tomorrow you’ll take up the sword.”
Her eyes lit. “Really?”
“Tomorrow. For now, go to bed.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
She didn’t sleep. Fallon waited until she was certain Mallick had gone to his own bed, then slipped out the window. Though she didn’t feel compelled to hunt for the wolf—as she’d done the night before with no success—she needed the night, the air, the woods.
However weary her body, her spirit remained awake, engaged, alight as if on a quest of its own. So she slipped through the shifting shadows, through the looming, denuded trees, through the sighs and murmurs of night. In the distance the glow from the elfin clan’s bonfire shimmered against the dark. There would be feasting and games and dancing in the glow. There might be girls her age to talk to.
Yet she turned away from the shimmer, kept to the shadows. Too much beat inside her tonight for games and girl talk, and the beat struck, struck, struck as insistently as the tribal drums from the camp.
Heart music, from the trees, the earth, the drums, the spirits who slid in and out of the thinned veil, all quickened inside her. Night creatures, hunter and prey, crept and stalked through those shadows with her, and the skeletal branches overhead creaked like an old man’s bones.
She had no fear, only a deep, thirsty need to be out, to look for something she couldn’t yet see.
She lifted her hand, ran it over the hair that stopped at the nape of her neck. Shorter than her brothers’, she thought, still shocked by it.
Maybe the same knowing that had driven her to shear it off drove her now, to seek the night. She wandered toward the faerie glade but found she didn’t want that, either. Restless, as if something tickled up and down her spine, she wandered without aim or purpose.
And perhaps because she didn’t hunt the wolf, she found him.
He stood, pure white, between two trees. Eyes of bold, sharp blue watched her. Around his neck the thick collar of gold glinted.
She couldn’t claim he looked friendly, but Fallon reasoned Mallick wouldn’t have sent her on a quest to find a wolf who’d eat her.
And something, something about the night, the way the air tasted on her tongue, the steady pulse beat of the power that had flooded her during the ritual, made her fearless.
“Greetings, Faol Ban. Ah, blessed be. I’m Fallon Swift, child of the Tuatha de Danann, student of Mallick the Sorcerer. I’ve been looking for you.”
She took a cautious step forward. The wolf bared his teeth.
“Okay. I’ll just stay over here.” She slid her hands into her pockets, and found the bit of pumpkin bread she’d forgotten she slipped there that afternoon.
She took it out, held it up to show the wolf. “It’s pretty good. I made it this morning. It’s not as good as my mom’s, but I never made it by myself before. You want it?”
She saw the wolf’s eyes shift to the bread in her hand, then cut right back to hers.
Considering they’d trained Jem and Scout with hard biscuits her mom made for that purpose, she tossed the bread.
Maybe she could make the dog biscuits and bring some next time.