A Glimmering Girl Read Online Free

hardened.
    “Send my daughter to Brother Marrek for burial.” His instructions to Mr. Thresher carried up to the window. “I’ll pay for the winding sheet.” He rode away.
    Igraine’s blood raced as she closed the shutter and let the curtain drop. She caressed the infant’s soft cheek, and the urge within her took hold like a call from the high gods. She swaddled the baby, then flicked her wrists. “Quiet.”
    She placed the bundle on top of the bread loaves in her potion bag and gestured in a circle to set a boundary around herself.
    “Obscure.” The wyrd wouldn’t make her exactly invisible. It would render her unseen, like a servant in the background.
    Going home to Kaelyn could wait one more day. Igraine reached the bottom of the stairs unseen and halfway to the front door.
    “There’s a fairy in the house!” Mrs. Thresher the elder called out from her chair by the fire. “Bring me holy cakes! A fairy!”
    Igraine kept moving. No one noticed her but an old woman whom everyone knew was daft—and even that lady had it wrong. Igraine was no fairy. She crossed the threshold with her bag and its silent contents, walked past the farmer’s wife and through the front door with no qualms about her intentions.
    Besides, Sir Yestin had asked her to take the infant to sacred ground. Perhaps the high gods had been speaking through him even then.
    She would take the baby to Avalos.
    Igraine crossed through the Threshers’ field to the road and on, retracing her steps from the morning until she came once again to Igdrasil at the cliffs, high above the bay.
    The great oak tree was a source of great power—and the scene of the country’s greatest tragedy. When Igraine was little and still living on the island, she’d begged to hear the story over and over again. Here King Jowan’s only son fell to his death along with his bride to be, a princess of Sarumos.
    If only the young couple had lived! Dumnos might yet have a king and be better equipped to resist England’s efforts at annexation. In the time since the tragic fall, Sarumos—London—had grown stronger, and Dumnos had not.
    The sky was darkening and the mist rolled in over the bay.
    “Help me, Igdrasil.” Igraine laid the bundle between two thick roots and opened the blanket, exposing the child’s chest to the cold November air. With one palm on Igdrasil’s trunk and the other on the baby’s skin, she prayed.
    “Brother Sun and Sister Moon, hear me! Igdrasil, use me! Let the living power which flows through all things flow through me to this child. Give her strength to thrive.”
    The baby began to cry, weak mewling sounds which then rose to a vigorous wail. Pure loving energy coursed from the tree through Igraine to the child.
    “Thank you, Igdrasil.” Relief and joy and wonder filled Igraine’s heart. “Brother Sun and Sister Moon, thank you.”
    Charged and renewed by communion with the world tree, Igraine stretched forth her hands toward the Severn Sea and cast a spell to call Velyn. The mist began to part where it met the water’s surface. Igraine slung her potion bag over her shoulder and gathered the baby into her arms.
    She took the hidden passage down to the rocky shore and from the water’s edge looked up over her shoulder. The cliff’s height seemed so much greater from below. The fall must have been terrifying. Igraine pictured the prince and princess on their stallions, true black and snow white, racing away from the wyrding woman who’d been jealous of their love.
    The lovers had ridden fast and hard in the dark night. Diantha, unfamiliar with the landscape, hadn’t known that Igdrasil grew at the edge of a cliff. When her horse plummeted over the side, Galen had followed, unable to bear the thought of living without her.
    Igraine smiled at her naïveté. It had once seemed the most romantic thing ever. “What do you think, little one?” she murmured to the baby. “Will you or I ever know such love?”
    Clearly poor Rozenwyn