Abhainn's Kiss Read online

  Acknowledgements

  Inspired by the works of Brian Froud, Pierre DuBuis, Nancy Arrowsmith and George Moorse.

  Dedication

  For Rick—with all my Celtic heart.

  Pronunciation Guide

  Abhainn: Ā-vawn

  Nuala: NOO-lah

  Màthair: MAH-hair

  Mícheál: MIH-hahl

  Inisghriann: IN-ish-reen

  Dun Laoghaire: dun L’HEER-y

  Chapter One

  “Awake, Cadwyn. It is time.”

  Cadwyn stirred and stretched, blinking in the rising light of dawn. Ah, it must be spring, she thought, drinking in the green smells of earth, new grass and water only recently freed from its winter prison of ice.

  “Hurry. You must begin.” The voice, though kind, held an undertone of urgency.

  Cadwyn shook off the last of the cobwebs of her stone-sleep and rose from her mossy bed by the stream bank. She had long ago mastered the art of transforming herself from her sleeping form of a small stone to her waking form of a Spinner.

  “How long have I been sleeping?” She yawned, flexing her fingers and toes, feeling the delicious stretch of muscles that had too long lain in sleep.

  “That is unimportant,” said the woman, backlit and indistinct against the pale sky. “What matters is that you must begin.”

  Cadwyn blinked up at the woman who addressed her, and brightened.

  “What life am I to spin for this time?” she asked eagerly. Then the elder voice laughed softly, and hope dimmed. Oh, please, Goddess. Not another grasshopper. Not another Pillywiggin. I’m ready to spin the lifethreads of bigger things!

  “Bigger things?” The elder woman’s voice held amusement and a trace of chiding. “Each thread in the web of life has importance, Cadwyn. This much you should have already learned.”

  Cadwyn flushed that the woman could read her so easily. She dropped her gaze in embarrassment. “Forgive me, Mistress,” she murmured. She felt a gentle finger hook under her chin, and reluctantly she raised her head.

  Cadwyn gasped and instantly averted her gaze. This was no ordinary Mistress sent to set her on her next spinning task. The Old Mother. The Lady herself has come to me.

  “Look into my eyes, child.”

  Cadwyn paled and gave her head a small shake. “I…I cannot. The other Mistresses told me…”

  “That a mere Spinner must never look into the Old Mother’s eyes?” The voice hinted laughter. “Have no fear, little one. I have been watching you since you were a tiny pebble in this very stream. You are the one I seek for this task.”

  Cadwyn stubbornly kept her gaze on her shoes, which she realized in dismay were not terribly clean. “Perhaps one of the larger stones…”

  “Do not waste time trying to avoid your duty, Cadwyn.”

  Cadwyn instantly jerked her head up. “I would never do that, Lady.” She found herself eye to eye with the Old Mother and held her gaze despite her fear.

  The brightening dawn light revealed the Lady’s long flowing hair. Not grey, exactly. More like black, but frosted by millions of tiny diamonds shimmering in moonlight. Ageless beauty, hard-won wisdom, and many lifetimes of cares traced the fine-boned face.

  The Old Mother smiled, the resulting creases taking nothing away from her riveting face. She lifted a graceful arm, draped in green cloth of unimagined texture and hue, and again took Cadwyn’s chin so she had no choice but to look into her Lady’s eyes.

  They swirled with all the colors of the earth—blue, then green, grey, brown, orange, gold, silver. Cadwyn could have watched them forever, but for the worry and urgency that radiated out of them, along with the glint of ancient wisdom.

  Self-conscious, Cadwyn looked away and hastily smoothed her sleep-rumpled hair and brushed at the moss that clung to her apron. And her skirt. And her sleeves… She stared at the variety of little plants that had grown upon her while she slept, brushed at pale green lichen that clung in bits to her skin, touched her hair and found it full of twigs—or possibly tree roots. She looked up at the Old Mother, alarmed.

  “Exactly how long have I been sleeping?”

  For the first time, she saw the Old Mother hesitate.

  “Walk with me and I will explain along the way,” the Lady invited with a sweep of her arm. “There is not much time. Come.”

  At the touch of the Lady’s hand on her own, Cadwyn found herself transported from the quiet glade of her sleep to a star-filled chamber. A multi-hued, incredibly complex web of light was flung across the room, from end to end, side to side, top to bottom, stretching into invisibility in all directions. And all over this web, her sister Spinners worked.

  Cadwyn had been here many times in the past, adding her own little weavings that represented the lives of the smallest and least complicated of the Fae. But something felt different now. A sense of the frantic permeated the web room, and its Spinners bent to their tasks with frightening ferocity, fingers flying, spindles clattering at a terrible speed.

  Cadwyn reached out a hand and lay her palm on the nearest matrix of life-threads, which looked alarmingly fragile. She swayed and nearly fell to her knees. In her buzzing ears, she heard flatly spoken words.

  “Ah, now you begin to understand, Cadwyn, Lady of Stone.”

  “What is wrong with the Earth?” Cadwyn cried, both hands now racing over the strands. “The water… I can taste it. Something fouls it. The air… Oh, sweet Goddess, the trees. What has happened to the trees? And my dear birds…oh…my flowers…”

  The Old Mother gently but firmly grasped Cadwyn’s frantic fingers and pulled her around. “Do you see all these Spinners, child? They are not only adding to the web of life, they are trying repair it. Every Spinner in the kingdom is at work. Everyone—” the Lady sighed “—but you. You, we have allowed to sleep as long as possible. A thousand years.”

  Cadwyn felt her insides go hollow. The scope of her vision widened, and she spun slowly in a circle, seeing now that what the Lady said was true. Hundreds, thousands, many millions of Spinners worked the web, barely sparing a glance for her or the Lady. She had wished for bigger things, but this was too big. The web had grown immeasurably in her absence, but also stretched thinner.

  Hands shaking, she reached into a deep pocket in her dress and brought out her spindle.

  “I am ready.”

  The Old Mother took her hand and led her through twisting passageways within the web, then to a long, wide corridor where the web looked to be split nearly in two. She followed the Old Mother to the end of the corridor, out to the very edge of the matrix, where a ragged piece of web floated almost separate from the main structure, linked to the two halves by one fragile strand.

  “Begin here,” said the Lady, her manner brisk, but not unkind. “Careful,” she warned when Cadwyn reached out to touch the drifting piece. “This race of Fae are very fragile, like the waters to which they are bonded.”

  “A water Faery,” Cadwyn whispered in wonder.

  The Lady suddenly stiffened and drew in a sharp breath, briefly closing her eyes. “Quickly,” she said with sudden urgency. “A child of this race is about to be born. You must begin spinning for it now!” She waved her hand and a pool of dark, moonlit water appeared at their feet. “Use this.”

  Cadwyn trembled. Moonwater. What creature merited this most precious of substances? Most lives were merely touched by it; no Spinner had ever woven an entire life out of it. Self-doubt pressed down on her spirit. She turned to the Lady in appeal. “Is there no one else?”

  For the first time, the Old Mother’s expression turned thunderous.

  “There is no one else. You must begin now. Look…” The Lady opened a portal, and Cadwyn look through it, down into the interior of a tiny cottage. A woman lay in chi
ldbirth, and another lone woman attended her. “The child comes. If you do not begin to spin her lifethread now…” She paused, and Cadwyn had the distinct impression she was trying to think of anything but what she had been about to say. “…this race will be lost.”

  Cadwyn seated herself and swallowed hard. Picking the laboring mother’s lifethread from the ragged edge of the drifting piece of web, she resolutely plunged her hand into the Moonwater pool, pulled out a healthy handful and began to spin, working the new thread into the mother’s.

  The Moonwater wasn’t nearly as fragile as she had feared. It flowed rapidly through her fingers as she watched the birthing process through the portal, voices of the two women in the cottage drifting across the barrier.

  “Please, Ardaith,” the midwife implored as squeezed copious amounts of water over the mother’s skin. “The dawn is almost upon us. You must allow me to move you to a safe place!”

  The laboring woman, Ardaith, tossed her head from side to side on the pillow. “No, Nuala! The bairn comes now.” A contraction gripped her bulging belly, and she raised herself up onto her elbows, curled her back, and groaned in such animal tones that Cadwyn nearly dropped her spindle.

  “Quickly now,” urged Nuala, moving into a position between Ardaith’s upraised knees, a large cloth at the ready. Between anxious glances at the cottage’s east-facing window, she exhorted the mother to push, push hard, hurry!

  Ardaith fell back on the pillow, sobbing her exhaustion. “If I cannot do this, Nuala…”

  Nuala began to wildly shake her head.

  “Nuala, listen to me! You must take the child and wrap it in your black shawl. Wet it down first. Take the child to my…uuuunh…take her underground. You know the place. You must run! You have only a few breaths to do this, or she dies.”

  Nuala nodded, sobbing, as she hurried around the bed to adjust the tight-woven, dark blankets that kept out the sun. “Maybe if we keep the windows covered—”

  “We must not take the chance. The sun is above the horizon; I can feel it weakening me. Leave me and take her to my safe place. Aaaahhhh! Now! She’s coming now!”

  The next moments passed so quickly, Cadwyn blinked and missed most of what happened. Events unfolded in a blur.

  Ardaith bore down one last time. Nuala cried out in triumph as the wet, slippery baby tumbled into her outstretched hands. She held the child up for Ardaith to see. Ardaith, smiling through tears, reached for her child.

  With a slight snick, something sliced neatly through the window cloth, something that left the narrowest of slits behind and embedded itself, twanging, in the opposite wall. A bright streak of sunlight streamed through the slit, falling on the dull, quivering shaft of black, barbed arrow. Cadwyn blinked at it for a moment, then turned her gaze back to the childbed.

  Ardaith was gone. The rumpled blankets where she had lain dripped with glowing blue water, its brightness rapidly fading in the rising dawn.

  To her horror, Cadwyn realized the thread had gone slack in her hands. Her gaze flew to the web. Ardaith’s lifethread dangled free, apparently having frayed and snapped while Cadwyn’s attention had been anywhere but where it belonged—on her spindle. The child’s thread lay limp in her frozen fingers, barely begun but already fading before her eyes.

  I must somehow reattach this thread into the web. But it is so weak now, I know it will snap.

  The pool of Moonwater at her side wavered and threatened to vanish. Casting about wildly, her eyes pounced on a thread that strayed from the edge of her own mistreated apron. Without thought, she snatched the thread, pulled it free, plunged it into the Moonwater, and bent her head to her task, holding her breath as she worked the moon-spun thread around the sturdier Stone Maiden strand.

  I will not fail this child as I failed her mother. She will live!

  She looked neither right nor left, hearing but never seeing when Nuala raced from the cottage with a tiny, weakly crying bundle in her arms.

  Cadwyn worked the child’s thread into the floating piece of web, willing with all her might that the child would live. She dared let out a breath as the thread grew stronger in her flying fingers. To her amazement, it began to glow.

  She allowed one word to penetrate her fiercely focused thoughts.

  Asrai.

  She sensed a presence behind her, but did not look up, knowing whom it was without looking. She worked on, desperately hoping the Old Mother hadn’t seen her mistake, hadn’t seen the furtive addition of her own apron thread to correct it.

  “Yes,” said the Old Mother, her voice heavy and for the first time, sounding old. “The child is of the Asrai.”

  “The Asrai are cursed,” said Cadwyn and then bit her tongue, scolding herself for telling the Lady what she already knew.

  “Does this make a difference to you?”

  Cadwyn spared a few moments’ attention to consider. Mentally she replayed what she had seen below, remembering the thin, black arrow embedded in the wall. “No,” she said finally, “It doesn’t.”

  “Good.” The Lady sighed. “Aye, the Asrai have been cursed these past thousand years for breaking the Great Circle. You have seen the result.” She lifted a hand to touch the damaged, dirty web. “Because of one Asrai’s love for a human, Camelot fell and set the Earth on the path of destruction, and our own world with it. I suspect Queen Berchta had a hand in the Asrai’s downfall,” she went on, “but I have no proof. For the Asrai queen’s failure to take her place in the Great Circle, all her kind have been forbidden to show themselves in the light of day. If they dare, their punishment is to dissolve into the very waters to which they are bonded.”

  Cadwyn felt the Lady’s strong hand on her shoulder.

  “This Asrai child is the last hope that the Circle can be healed, and save us all.”

  “Someone is trying to kill the child, Mistress. Who?” She felt the Lady’s hesitation.

  “I do not know at this time,” the Lady said finally. “There are dark forces in our world, as dark as those of the world of Men. You have not been exposed to this darkness before now.”

  The Lady fell silent, and Cadwyn felt her eyes on her, as if waiting for any sign of faltering. She set her jaw and quelled her panic.

  “Can you do this, child?” came the Lady’s voice.

  Without looking up, Cadwyn nodded.

  The Lady turned to the larger web of Life, selected a strong-looking portion, and touched it.

  “Attach the child’s lifethread here. No one will think to look for her here.”

  The Lady stepped quietly away from young Cadwyn, out of hearing range, then released a long sigh.

  She had seen Cadwyn falter, seen the young Spinner snatch a thread from her own garment to keep the baby’s lifethread alive. The Lady had stilled her instant urge to intervene, cooler thoughts prevailing.

  Cadwyn has bonded this Fae child with both water and stone. What does it mean? Will the tiny thread of stone strengthen the child? Perhaps…temporarily. We will have to wait and see if the law of water on stone holds true.

  When water drips upon a stone, eventually the stone weakens and breaks.

  A movement in the portal caught the corner of her eye. Careful not to disturb Cadwyn, the Lady took a silent step closer to it and peered through. Time ran differently here, and she knew that Cadwyn’s flying fingers had already taken the child well past babyhood.

  She caught her breath. Cadwyn—young, earnest, clueless Cadwyn—had not noticed that the far end of the Moonwater thread had brushed against another part of the web. One containing the lifethreads of humans.

  Cadwyn had unwittingly brought a human into the picture.

  With silent movement, the Lady touched the human lifethread, sensing, assessing.

  Here beats a strong heart. The heart of a knight. But the time of the knights was over, long ago. Will this heart be allowed to beat free?

  Was Cadwyn’s mistake unwitting, after all?

  “There are no accidents,” she mused as she watched
the scene in the portal unfold before her.

  “Lady?”

  The Lady didn’t take her eyes off the portal, but patted Cadwyn on her rhythmically swaying shoulder. “Never mind, child. Keep to your work.”

  This human may have some part to play. If not, his thread will loose and drift harmlessly away. We will simply wait and see.

  The Lady’s gaze lingered long on the human’s lifethread. Considering.

  No. I cannot interfere with this human’s free will.

  But… it won’t hurt to light his path—should he so choose to take it…

  “It’s my turn to be Lancelot!” The Faery child plunked herself down on a pile of stone, white-gold hair floating in a wild cloud about her face. She poked her bottom lip out at the wiry boy who circled her on a sturdy island pony.

  “You can’t be Lancelot, you’re a girl.” His voice jounced in time to the pony’s trotting feet. “And you’re too short, besides. My daddy calls me puny, and you don’t even come up to my elbow.”

  She puffed out a breath. “But I’m tired of standing about like a ninny while you get to joust and wield swords…”

  “Gwenhwyfar was not a ninny, you ninny. She was a queen. Arthur’s queen.”

  “Well, all right, but this time I get a sword. I mean, what if all the knights are busy and Mordred sneaks into the castle?”

  “That makes sense, I guess. She didn’t get to be queen by lying around and letting everyone do everything for her. Arthur wouldn’t have thought much of someone like that.”

  The Fae child smiled in satisfaction. Springing up from her rock, she grabbed the pony’s forelock, bringing it to a jolting halt with barely a touch, and whispered something in its ear. Instantly the animal stood on its hind legs, dumped the protesting boy onto a pile of soft moss and showed its heels as it cantered away.

  “Not fair!”

  The girl danced around him in a circle, mocking his indignant tone and sticking her tongue out at him.

  The boy leaned back on one arm and wiped his brow with the other. “It’s hot. Do y’all have a swimming hole around here?”