Summer came and went with hot, bright days filled with study and practice. With fall’s approach, hot days slapped against cool nights until the air went to war. In the distance funnel clouds swirled in skies purple as a bruise and fired stony pebbles of hail to tatter dying leaves.
The faeries murmured the war of wind, of ice and heat, served as a sign, as the time of The One’s training approached its end, and the true battle of light against dark began.
Fallon called it science.
Still, when storms broke over the cottage, they broke with the fury of driving rain and snapping lightning, the bellow of thunder that echoed, echoed through the woods.
Fallon brought one herself, with a snapping fury of her own, when Mallick pushed her through three rounds of conflict, then criticized her form.
She stood on boots caked with mud on ground boggy from the last rain and swiped the illusionary blood of the ghosts she’d defeated from her face.
“I beat them, all of them. Every time.”
“You’re wounded,” Mallick pointed out, “because you were slow, and you were sloppy.”
Her lungs burned, but that was nothing to the temper rising in her. “I’m standing. They’re not.”
As cool as she was hot—another clash and slap—he dismissed results, emphasized process. “Five times you lost your footing. Twice you failed to use your momentum and lost your advantage.”
“Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.”
“Harsh language won’t keep you alive on the battlefield, and only emphasizes your weaknesses.”
“Fuck that, and you.”
Enraged, insulted, she conjured three ghosts, battered at them. Blind to all but the need to strike back, she sliced, hacked, blasted power that erupted in flame while her temper boiled. With the boiling came the wind, and then the thunder.
Kill, she thought, riding her own rage. Kill them all.
And then the lightning, red as the blood spattered over her, slashed across the bubbling gray sky, fired in spears and pitchforks. As she decapitated the last ghost, a strike shot down and cleaved the tree where Taibhse often perched.
It exploded, shooting out sharp darts and daggers of wood and shredded leaves.
Drenched, muddy, stunned, she ran toward the blaze. “Oh God! Taibhse!”
“He was wise enough to keep his distance from your temper and stupidity.”
She searched the sky, looking for the spread of white wings as the boiling clouds folded back into themselves. “He’s all right? He’s okay?”
“You’d know if he wasn’t.”
Trembling, she shoved her dripping hair out of her eyes. “I could’ve … I was so mad, but I didn’t mean to—”
“ ‘Mean to’ is nothing. You endangered others, you destroyed a living thing out of pique. You misused your gift.”
He didn’t shout; she’d have preferred it. Instead his voice dripped with a disgust that crushed her.
Tears swam into her eyes. It hurt her stomach to hold them back, but she held them. She didn’t deserve the comfort of tears.
“I’m sorry. I have no excuse. But—”
“ ‘But’ precedes an excuse.”
She swallowed it, though it went down hard and bitter.
“Clean up your mess,” he said, the words so cold she shivered. He walked away from her, closed the cottage door firmly behind him.
Sickened, shattered, she shut down the rain and walked to the smoldering remains of the tree. She watched smoke rise into the blue sky of summer, cooled the debris.
Slowly, laboriously, she gathered what could be used for firewood or kindling, carried load by load to stack. Her body ached—the ghosts had landed some hard blows—but the guilt hurt more. It took hours, as she wouldn’t use magicks for this.
When it was done, she chose a twig, held it between her hands and offered her penance. She allowed the tears now, let them and her breath coat the twig to bring the roots. She spoke the words humbly as she planted it. Holding her hands over it, she called a quiet rain to tease out the first leaves.
“From what was taken new life begins. I ask forgiveness for my sins.”
She picked up a charred stick, studied it, and began to create for herself a warning and a reminder.
Bruised, exhausted, her throat mad with thirst, she went inside. She wanted a shower, cup after cup of cool water, but she trudged up the stairs to the workshop.
Mallick sat working, a glass of wine at his elbow. He didn’t spare her a glance.
“There’s no excuse. I let pride take me over, and I used my anger to destroy. I harmed a living thing, and might have done worse because I … gave up control for temper. I had no control. I only wanted to kill, to prove you were wrong. You weren’t wrong.”
She needed him to know, to understand if not forgive. “I can use anger on the battlefield. I need to feel. Mallick, if I don’t feel—anger, joy, sorrow, and everything else—I’m less. Feeling makes me stronger. But I know now, especially now, that without control, my power, my strength, my feelings are a weakness.”
He capped a bottle of amber liquid, labeled it. “Then you learned a valuable lesson. Perhaps the most valuable.”
“I didn’t use magicks to clean up, but I did to bring life from part of the tree. To plant a new one, and ask for forgiveness.”
He turned to her then, ready to give his own. And saw the carved wooden cuff on the wrist of her sword hand.
Amazed, appalled, he whirled to her. “You made yourself a trinket? You would use what you destroyed for your own adornment.”
“No, no, not a trinket. A reminder.”
She thrust out her arm.
He gripped it, another lecture on his tongue. Then studied the cuff.
It bore the fivefold symbol and the words Solas don Saol.
Light for Life.
“I’ll shed blood. I’ll take lives. I’ll send people into battle or give them duties that may end their lives. If I accept that, I have to believe this. Light for life. To fight the war to end the war. And never, never to strike out without cause, without control, the way I did today. I’ll wear this to remind me.
“I’m sorry. Can’t you forgive me?”
He looked at her. A blackened eye, a badly scraped cheek in a face still so young. Youth couldn’t be an excuse for her, but he’d allowed himself to forget it was a reason.
“We’ll forgive each other.”
“You didn’t do anything.”
“I let my own anger leave you untended. Healing is a gift, and I ignored my gift to punish you. Sit now, and let me tend to you as I should have.”
In the morning, after a night of dreams, Fallon rose to bring in the tributes, and to leave her gifts. She smelled fall in the air, the spice and smoke of it. And she thought of home.
As she brewed tea she decided during her free time that day she’d go through the crystal and visit New York again. The one her mother had loved.
So many smells, she thought, so much color and movement. And noise! She’d already walked the sidewalks under the towering buildings, marveling at the wonders. Cars, so many cars making a constant thunder of sound. People, so many people, hurrying and dressed in such fine clothes. Windows filled with clothes and shoes and satchels and gems and gold and silver sparkling behind glass.
Food. Everywhere. In wagons, in windows, inside shops, even on the sidewalks. The smell of meat and flowers and gas and everything. Of humanity.
She’d watched a young Lana in her white jacket and cap cooking in a huge kitchen full of people and more noise, shouts, movement, steam, heat. It was wonderful.
She’d watched Max write in a room full of books and pictures. His fingers busy tapping letters—a keyboard, she knew a keyboard. And the letters, the words appeared like magick on the screen.
She’d go back, she decided, maybe to the day she’d watched them walk in a great green space, holding hands and laughing.
She wouldn’t look, not today, at the now as she had, and Mallick with her. She wouldn’t look through the crystal to the scorched buildings, the rubble of others, the filth and the blood. Today, she wouldn’t have the screams in her head.