Twixt Firelight and Water Read Online Free Page A

have to invent a story to cover my overnight absence. It felt wrong to lie to her, but she could not know the truth. If this worked, if Ciarán escaped, my mother would be brutal in her efforts to track the perpetrators down. The thought that her touch might reach my sweetheart curdled my blood and froze my heart within me. Let the sorceress stay away. Let us be gone when she returns.
     
    * * * *
     
    I think Ciarán knew. His eldritch abilities were exceptional. As the first dawn light touched the leaves of the rowans, a small form slipped out the cottage door, a hooded cloak concealing his bright hair. He moved across the open ground as swiftly as a creature evading predators, which, in a way, was exactly what he was. I glanced at the father’s face, just once, and saw the glint of tears. The nobleman squatted down as the child approached us where we stood under the trees. Ciarán stopped two paces away, a tiny, upright figure, preternaturally still.
     
    I think the father was intending to re-introduce himself, to reassure, to explain quickly the need for silence and flight. After all, his son had been a baby when they last met.
     
    ‘Papa?’ The small voice was held quiet. The child understood that this must be covert.
     
    ‘I’ve come to take you home, Ciarán.’ The grimmest of warriors could not have kept his tone steady at such a moment. ‘We must go now, and as quietly as we can. Shall I carry you?’
     
    Ciarán shook his head. He put a hand in his father’s, as if they had been parted only from twilight till dawn, and they set off side by side. At the rear, uneasily, came the two brothers and I.
     
    It felt as if I scarcely breathed while we made our way out of the forest and along the lake to the place where their horses were stabled. I waited at a distance while they retrieved the beasts; the fewer people saw me in their company, the fewer could make a link if my mother came asking. They mounted. Ciarán was seated before his father in the saddle.
     
    ‘Thank you,’ the nobleman said gravely. ‘I understand what you have risked for him. I am in your debt.’
     
    ‘Ride safely,’ I said. ‘I don’t suppose we will meet again. Goodbye, Ciarán.’ I saw, looking at him, that while he was my mother’s son, a child with more than his share of the uncanny, he was also a human boy of five, scared, excited, almost overwhelmed by what had happened. ‘The blessing of Danu be always on you, little brother.’
     
    He allowed himself a smile. ‘And on you, Conri,’ he said, and they rode away. Perhaps Ciáran’s father did not understand that an ordinary human man could not break a sorceress’s protective charm, however strong and determined he might be. But I understood, and I recognised in that moment that without the innate talent of the child himself, this rescue mission could never have been accomplished.
     
    * * * *
     
    Lugnasad morn: the dawn of our wedding day. The cottage had been promised to a local family down on their luck; they had paid only a token sum for the use of it. The grandmother had traded her house cow for a creaky cart and an ancient horse. I doubted either would last as far as our destination, the place where these cousins lived. Nonetheless, as soon as the hand-fasting ritual was over we were heading north. We would make camp by the wayside, and our wedding night would be spent under the stars.
     
    Lóch sent me out of the house while she put on her finery. It was a surprise, she told me with twinkling eyes. I had seen her gown already. In a tiny cottage, there is little room for secrets. But I kissed her and went outside anyway. We had a small supply of good hay we’d kept aside to give the horse a strengthening meal before we started out. I’d take that down to the field, not hurrying over it. By the time I got back Lóch would be ready.
     
    One moment I was standing by the dry-stone wall, feeding the horse by hand. The next I was flat on my back, held immobile in