Twixt Firelight and Water Read Online Free Page B

the grip of a spell. I could not move so much as my little finger. I looked up and into my mother’s eyes.
     
    ‘Where is he?’
     
    There was only one feeling in me, and that was terror — not for myself, not for Ciarán, who should be well away by now, but for Lóch. I didn’t make a sound. I couldn’t have told my mother what she wanted anyway. The charm she had set on me made every breath a mountain to climb. Speak? Hardly.
     
    ‘Where is he, Conri? Tell me! Vanished in the night, his keepers said. A child of that age does not wander off on his own.’ Her face was a spectral white, her eyes wine-dark. Her voice scourged me. ‘Speak, Conri! What did you see? Who came? Which way did they go?’
     
    I lay mute, staring up at her like a dullard who cannot understand plain words. With a very small part of my mind, the part I was able to shield, I willed Lóch not to come out and look for me.
     
    ‘What is the matter with you, wretched boy? While you tend to horses like a feeble-minded farmhand, and no doubt waste day after day on your endless hummings and tinklings, my son has disappeared from under your nose! You fool, Conri, you stupid, treacherous fool! Tell me! You must know! Tell me who has taken him!’ She relaxed her spell a little; she wanted me capable of speech.
     
    If I lied, she would recognise it instantly. If I told the truth she would be off after them in the blink of an eye. My silence could win them precious time. I lay there, looking up at her, and spoke not a word.
     
    ‘Come.’ My mother clicked her fingers. Now I could move. I could move in one direction only, and that was after her. A good thing. She led me away from Lóch, away from the grandmother, away from the cottage and into the forest. She led me, a dog on an invisible chain, across the margin and into the Otherworld. We stood in the shade of the oaks, the sorceress and I, and in my mind I offered an apology to my little brother, and another to his father, and my regrets to the two hard-faced men who were Ciáran’s half-brothers. I had not particularly liked them, but I had respected them. I had seen the bonds of family there, a phenomenon previously unknown to me. I hoped those bonds were strong enough to withstand a sorceress’s fury.
     
    ‘Very well, Conri.’ My mother’s face was calm now. She knew I could not run, not with her spell on me. She knew how easily I had bent and broken before her punishments in the years of my growing to a man. ‘I can ensure you never set your fingers to the harp strings again. I can turn you into a twisted, crippled apology for a man. I can do this between one breath and the next. There is one way you can save yourself, and that is by telling me what you know. Now, Conri. Right now.’
     
    My heart thudded like a war drum; my skin broke out in cold sweat. She didn’t know about Lóch. Somehow, all summer long, she had been so engrossed in her new project, honing her human weapon, that she had taken her eyes right off me. She had not seen that I had fallen in love. She had threatened my hands; she had threatened my body. She had not used the threat that I most feared. Oh gods, if only I could be strong, both Ciarán and Lóch might be spared my mother’s wrath.
     
    I drew a deep breath. ‘I know nothing,’ I said. ‘Nothing at all.’
     
    I expected pain, and she delivered it. I put my teeth through my lip; I bloodied my palms with my nails. At a certain point I lost control of my bladder, ruining my wedding clothes. The sun rose higher. The Lugnasad ritual would be starting, and Lóch would be cross with me. I tried not to think of her. The most probing, the most penetrating charm my mother could devise must never find the small, safe place where my dear one was hidden, deep in my heart.
     
    My mother must soon come to believe I had nothing to tell her, surely. I had never held out so long before. Always, eventually, I had delivered what she wanted once the punishment reached a