Abhainn's Kiss Read online

  The cottage around her disappeared into darkness, and in the next instant, she found herself standing outside on a tall hill, near the ashes of a dead fire. She cried out. She still felt the stone between her palms, and Nuala’s hands clasped over her own.

  “It’s all right, child,” came Nuala’s voice, faint and far away. “I will not let you go. Keep your eyes open and watch. This is your history…and your destiny.”

  Another pair of hands, larger, warmer, closed over her shoulders. Mícheál’s voice murmured something, and Nuala answered in an annoyed tone, but Abhainn couldn’t discern the words. It didn’t matter; the timbre of his voice calmed her pounding heart as the scene unfolded before her mind’s eye. She leaned back, into his arms, and let the vision come.

  A slender young woman, dressed in ceremonial robes of every color of blue and trimmed in gold, stood on the top of a mountain surrounded by sea. The stone circle in which she stood was deserted in the pre-dawn light, the ashes of the Beltane fire at its center long burnt out.

  Hooves thundered, closer and closer, until a lone knight reined his horse just outside the circle. He flung himself out of the saddle, his face pale, his armor streaked with blood.

  “Afon! Thank the gods you are safe.”

  He strode toward her, and she ran to him.

  “Blaen! What has happened?” she cried, drawing him with her to the side of a stream, where she used the edge of her own garment to wash the blood from his face. “I arrived for the Great Gathering, but no one is here!”

  Blaen caught her hands and held them still, his eyes bleak as they stared into hers.

  “After I left you, I rode to join the others to prepare for the battle.” He paused a moment to catch his breath. “They were gone. Their campfires were as cold and dead as this one.” He nodded toward the empty stone circle. “The battle was nearly over before I tracked them down. Afon,” he choked, “Arthur is dead.”

  Afon gasped. “How can this be? We were together only a few hours… Then you were to go to Arthur, and I to my place in the Great Gathering, the circle of power that was to ensure Arthur’s victory!”

  “Something must have…happened…when we came together. Remember after we loved the first time, you made a wish upon the moon? That this night would last until we could love no more?”

  Her face paled. “Yes, of course. But they were only word spoken on the wings of the moment…”

  “I am a man, Afon, but you are Fae, and High Mother of the Asrai, at that. Your wish held more power than either of us imagined.”

  Afon covered her mouth with her hands, her eyes wide with horror.

  “The Great Gathering is over, and I was not in my place!” Her voice broke. “The circle is broken and my people…oh, Goddess, my people are cursed and will suffer because of me!” She stumbled away a few paces, into the stream whose waters had always given her refuge and comfort. She stood there now, shivering.

  Blaen followed her into the stream, sloshing in his armor, and gathered her into his arms. “I, too, am cursed,” he choked. “Had I been by Arthur’s side, he would not have died.” He looked out over Avalon, glistening in the rising dawn. “Some foul work is afoot here. I feel it in my very bones.”

  The sun broke over the eastern horizon, and he closed his eyes against the glare. Afon stiffened in his arms, making an inarticulate sound in her throat.

  When he opened them again, his last vision of his love was her horrified face before she turned into a column of opalescent water, and dissolved with dreadful silence into the running stream.

  “No!”

  She had said her people were cursed, but not this! He waded along the stream, frantically trying to scoop up her bright essence, but it slipped through his fingers. He stood, frozen in shock, as the last of her colors raced down the hill, swept along by the stream and out into the retreating tide, where it quickly faded into the grey sea.

  Bone-chilling cold finally drove him out of the stream, stumbling, his mind blank with grief and anger. Breathing hard, he found his horse, withdrew his battle-axe from the saddle and barreled toward the sacred altar stone within the Great Circle. He raised the axe over the stone as the wind rose and howled around him.

  “By my blood and this stone, I will seek out and reveal the one who has done this to my love—and to my king! No foul Fae magic will ever again cloud my eyes, nor the eyes of my kin! By my blood and this stone, I swear it!” He sobbed and chanted a third time, sealing the vow. “By my blood and this stone!”

  He heaved the axe, breaking off a chunk of altar the size of his own fist. His tears fell upon it, and the blood on his hands stained it, as he flung himself into the saddle. Leaning low, he rode out of the circle and into the gathering mist.

  Michael caught the blue crystal, now the color of dull midnight, as it dropped from Abby’s limp fingers. Nuala promptly snatched it from him and attempted to shoo him aside, but he would not be shooed. His memories were not all in the right places yet, but clearly remembered that Nuala had treated him no differently back then; tolerating his presence rather than showing true hospitality. But he was a man now and wouldn’t be shunted aside so easily.

  “Abby, what is it?”

  She didn’t answer, appearing still lost in her vision, her eyes gleaming with a feverish light he had never seen before. He looked a Nuala.

  “What did that rock do to her?”

  Nuala snorted. “That rock was the keeper of the memory of Abhainn’s people.”

  “This is why I am afraid of the sea,” Abby murmured, blinking back to the present. “I am an Asrai. We are the Fae of the All Waters. Who was Afon, Màthair? Was she…”

  “An ancestor of yours, my child,” said Nuala softly. “She had already borne many daughters for the Isle of Avalon before she fell in love with the human man, Blaen of CraighMhor. On the night of Beltane, there was to be a Great Gathering of all the Fae peoples as a show of support for Arthur’s crown; but Afon, the high mother of her people, never came to take her place in the gathering. The circle was broken; without Blaen at his side in battle, Arthur fell. In his bitterness, Blaen of CraighMhor struck a piece off the altar stone and disappeared forever. From that moment to this, the Asrai dare not show themselves in the light of the sun, or… you saw what happened.”

  “Incredible,” whispered Michael, the boy inside him listening with rapt attention while his adult self scoffed at the wild story. Yet, he found himself rising to his feet, drawn to stand beside Abhainn with one hand resting on the back of her chair. Nuala’s expression plainly told him she wasn’t impressed by his protective stance, but he found himself grinning, enjoying the chance to challenge the older woman’s self-proclaimed authority.

  She pointedly ignored him and continued. “Your mother was a descendant of one of those daughters. I am not your true mother. But one day I will tell you of the day you were born.”

  Abhainn drew a breath to speak, but Nuala put up her hand to stop her. She ducked her head to hid the sheen in her eyes. “Not… today.”

  Wordlessly Abhainn rose from her chair and approached Nuala, extending her hands toward the old woman’s face. When Nuala would have turned away, Abhainn caught hold of her face and held it. With one finger, she touched the wetness at the corner of Nuala’s eye.

  “There is a memory in this tear,” she said quietly. “I would have it.”

  “No…” moaned Nuala, her voice breaking.

  As Michael watched, his finger tingling with the remembrance of the child-Abhainn’s tear on his skin, Abhainn closed her eyes as her mother’s tear ran along her finger. She gasped. “My mother died birthing me…” She opened her eyes and smiled. “You saved me.”

  The strain on the old woman’s face almost made Michael feel sorry for her.

  Abhainn spoke again, with a steadiness in her voice he had not heard before. “You raised me. You are the mother sent to me by the Goddess so that I should live. That is all I need to know.”

  “No,” said Nuala, reco
vering her composure. “That is not all you need to know. You are an Asrai, yes. But you are the last of your kind, Abhainn. Until now, a birthspell cast by the spinner of your lifethread, a Stone Maiden, has kept you alive. Her magic allowed you to walk in the sun, and kept you hidden from those who would seek to harm you. The earth is sick and suffering, child. Men cannot hear her cries as they blindly destroy it. They have forgotten us, forgotten the Fae who used to teach them how to live gently upon it. Only you have the power to heal the Great Circle, Abhainn. Heal the Great Circle, and we have a chance to join together to heal this world. Without you, hope is lost—for both men and Fae.”

  Abhainn, her customary fidgeting gone, stood perfectly still for several moments. Michael thought he sensed a fine tremor pass through her body. Fear? Or something else?

  “What happened to me,” she reached up and laid a small hand on Michael’s where it rested on the back of the chair, “to us…up on the hill today?”

  Nuala sighed. “Your birthspell has worn off, as the Lady foresaw. I had hoped it would hold until you came of age, when you would take your rightful place in the Great Circle. But…” She shrugged in an it-is-what-it-is attitude. “Fortunately for you, I suppose,” she lifted her nose in his general direction, “this human appeared at the right moment and you drew from him the strength to withstand the sun. Though why you would draw strength from the likes of him is beyond me. By the Lady’s grace, you were in a place that kept you from draining away into the sea.”

  He felt Abhainn tremble. “Like my ancestor,” she whispered.

  “Your fear of the sea is born within you. Now,” Nuala’s tone shifted from gentle to brisk, “before they left, the Selchies told me there is to be another Great Gathering in Avalon at the next full moon. The original plan was to bring you there under the protection and guise of the Selchies; but thanks to this bumbling human for letting that troll get away, it won’t be long until Queen Berchta sends more trolls to finish the job. You must leave at once.”

  “Berchta.”

  Michael felt Abby hiccup. “You’re scaring the hell out of her, woman,” he growled.

  Nuala turned on him with surprising vehemence. “Good. She needs to be frightened. Fear may keep her alive long enough to reach Avalon.”

  “Or paralyze her long enough for those Mr. Potato-Heads to find her,” he shot back. “Who the hell is this Berchta, anyway?”

  “Merely the queen of the Dark Fae. She who would tip the balance of power irrevocably to the side of darkness and destruction. Long have the mists hid this island from her eyes. But the trolls somehow found their way here under the ground. As you were too slow to catch it, it won’t be long before it brings back its friends.”

  Michael leaned toward her, growing more irritated with her by the moment. “Excellent! Evil queens, armies of garden gnomes gone bad. How do you plan to get her across open water to the mainland?”

  “The Selchies…”

  “How are they going to help Abby? If she sets one toe in the open sea, we could lose her.”

  “‘We’?” Nuala scoffed as she bustled about in a sudden frenzy to make ready for the journey.

  Michael followed her around the room, keeping one eye on Abby, who still looked stunned and none too steady at the moment. “If there is no ‘we’, then why are you only packing only one bag?”

  She hesitated. “I am old. Whatever magic the Lady granted me in order to protect her faded when her birthspell left her,” she said reluctantly. “She will be safer with those who possess the power to shield her.”

  A quick look at Abby. Her hands were over her mouth, eyes distressed. How much more bad news could this fragile-looking woman take?

  “She can’t go alone,” he barked, then caught himself. What was he saying? He had responsibilities in his own world. A business. Workers who depended on him. Obligations… He shrugged offhandedly. “I have to get off this rock anyway. I’ll take her with me.”

  “You! You?” Nuala hooted. “To Avalon. That’s rich. Selchies are the stuff of fairy tales, remember? Trolls don’t exist, remember? And Avalon is just a legend.” Sarcasm dripped from her tone.

  “I know what I saw with my own eyes,” he retorted. “I saw what happened to Abby. The arrow that bloodied my hand was real; the poison that could have killed me was drawn out when I touched that water.” His own scalp prickled at the realization. “Her water.”

  Nuala’s breath caught. She dropped the loaf of bread she’d been stuffing into a sack. Abby rose out of her chair. She and Nuala exchanged a glances. Michael plowed on. “Abby looks okay now, but what about later? What if the spell wears off again? She’ll need…” He trailed off as the two women stared at him. “What?”

  Nuala sat down on the long bench by the trestle table. “Your blood…mixed with hers?”

  Uh oh. What other Faery Commandment have I broken now? “Uh, I guess you could say that…”

  Clunk. “You! Get out of there, you little thieves!” Abhainn’s cry brought them both up short. She was busy shooing something away from his upended rucksack. “ ‘Tis well,” she said, scooping up the scattered contents one by one. “They were only naughty Pixies looking for food.”

  Michael frowned, looking around the floor. “Uh, I don’t see anything.”

  Abhainn gave her mother an accusing look. “I thought you said you had given his memories back!”

  Nuala threw up a hand. “That doesn’t mean his eyes have the power to see what’s right in front of him, child.”

  Abhainn’s fingers stilled when they closed over the bluish lump of granite that he had carried with him from home. She held it up for her mother to see.

  Faint red streaks marked its surface, and several dark patches showed dampness.

  Nuala snatched it and turned it over and over, examining the finely hewn corner and the rougher, broken side. She fixed him with a glare. “Where. Did. You. Get. This?”

  Michael held out his hand, and when she did not give it up, he made an impatient sound and took it from her, plucked his rucksack from the floor, and dropped the stone inside. “My grandmother said it came from ‘the old country’, which I assume is Wales, since that’s where her family came from. On her deathbed she asked me to return it to the place where it had come. She called it a ‘weeping stone’ because it never quite dried up. If you left it in a dry bowl at night, by morning the bowl would be full of water. She used to think it was lucky, but before she died she told me whatever luck it had, had worn off. She wanted to be rid of it.” He felt his face flush, remembering his father’s ridicule when the man had discovered his son had fallen for the old woman’s fanciful tale.

  Nuala’s eyes narrowed at him. “Remind me. What is your second name, boy?”

  The question caught him blind-sided. “It’s…Craig. Why?”

  Nuala groaned and buried her face in her hands.

  Abby’s face began to glow. “Craig, Màthair. ‘The rock.’ This is why the Old Mother Goddess must have sent him. He is of CraighMhor blood.”

  Nuala waved for silence. “This is the reason you came here?”

  His patience wore thinner. “I came because of this.” He unbuttoned a shirt pocket and drew out the slip of paper and a swatch of the incredible woolen fabric. “I’m looking for whoever makes this thread, because it may be the key to saving my company. The other thing…was just a promise to keep for an old woman, nothing more.”

  Nuala’s forehead creased as she took the articles from him. Abhainn crowded close to read over her shoulder.

  Isle of Inisghriann.

  “Who sent this to you?” she said sharply, eyes narrowed.

  “No clue. All I know is, if I can’t find more of it, my family’s mill will close.”

  Nuala and Abhainn gave each other a long look, then they commenced a rapid, whispered conversation in some language he couldn’t have understood anyway.

  Abruptly Nuala threw up her hands. “But he’s a male. A shiftless male.”

  Irritation fl
ared in his chest, but Abby’s small hand on his arm stayed his retort. He looked down into her elfin face.

  “In our world, the males of most Fae peoples don’t amount to much,” she said softly. “They spend most of their time feasting and lazing about.” Her eyes twinkled. “But they are at heart a chivalrous lot and can sometimes be moved to go to war for a lady’s honor.” The complete trust in her eyes left him speechless for a moment, then he grinned.

  “I guess it’s safe to say some things don’t change from one dimension to the next.”

  For a split second, their gazes locked, and something moved in him. A memory. Of he and Abhainn as little children, heads together, planning what game to play next. Deep in his belly, a long-forgotten sense of anticipation tightened, the sense that he was on the verge of an adventure.

  I don’t have time for an adventure, damn it.

  Then he looked down at her tiny hand on his arm, so slender it looked like he could snap it without even trying. Whatever it was she had to do, she surely was not strong enough to do it on her own.

  As if she read his thoughts, she straightened in defiance and turned to Nuala. “Màthair,” she said firmly, “he is going with me. I think he already has a plan, don’t you, Mícheál?”

  Nuala’s raised eyebrow loosened his tongue. Yes, he did have a plan, as it happened. One that could serve both their purposes, and his.

  “I’ll get her to Avalon. By taking her out of this realm and hiding her in mine. They won’t be able to track her as easily on the other side of the mists.”

  Chapter Five

  Mícheál’s guttural growl of frustration crescendoed in time with a solid kick to the hull of Nuala’s decrepit curragh. Its lone mast lay splintered across the gunwale, tattered sail flapping forlornly in the freshening night wind.

  “Trolls!” Nuala spat.

  Mícheál immediately started toward Abhainn as if to shield her.

  “Not now, fool,” Nuala said, exasperated. She pointed up, toward a circling flock of gulls. “If there are any about, the gulls will warn us.”