his heart asked of mine to give your mother more time. He loved her, Breen, and never stopped. But his love for you was beyond even that. He asked of me to watch and wait, and if I saw you had a need to come through, even more than if you were needed—and you are—that I would see to it. So I have.”
“How did you see to it? I didn’t know about the money, and it was just, well, luck, that I found out. Then got pissed off enough to do something I wanted. I came to Ireland because I wanted to see and feel and know that part of my heritage. I wanted to see where my father grew up, and I hoped to find him. I didn’t even know you existed when I decided to come to Ireland.”
“Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? You’re not in Ireland now.”
“Maybe you’ve had too much wine,” Breen said carefully. “Because I’m sitting right here. I’ve been staying in a cottage maybe a mile away, in Galway, for two weeks.”
“Aye, well, the cottage is in Ireland, that’s true. But you came through.”
“What? The looking glass?”
“And a fine story that is,” her grandmother said easily. “We’re fond of stories here. You wanted a dog.” Marg looked back at the pup, who’d curled up for a nap. “I sent you a dog. Your father left his two with me when he left—and oh, you cried so hard for them. For me as well, but wept, inconsolable, for the dogs. They’ve passed now, gone onto the next, but they had good long lives first.”
“Will . . . Will and Lute.”
“So you remember,” Marg said with a smile. “Eian named Will for the bard, and Lute as she liked to howl and did so musically.”
“I . . .” She did remember. Both big, gray, shaggy. Wolfhounds, Irish wolfhounds. “Sometimes I’d ride on Will’s back, like a pony. I shouldn’t be able to remember that. I couldn’t have been a year old.”
“The heart remembers.”
Because something in her started to jitter, Breen looked back at the sleeping pup. Safer territory. “So he is your dog? What’s his name?”
“He’s yours—a gift.”
“I can’t take him. I’m going back to Philadelphia at the end of the summer. And I have an apartment. I’m going to look for a house, but . . .”
“That’s not a worry if you want him. You’ve wanted a dog. You’ve always had an affinity for animals and . . . living things. I wanted to give you something your heart wanted, and so there he is.”
Not safer territory after all.
“Is it safe you’re wanting?” Marg demanded. “Is it really what you’re wanting when you wear the word for courage over the beat of your own heart?” She tapped a finger on Breen’s tattoo. “Be brave, girl, and listen. You’re blood of my blood, and I gave up the joy of you for reasons you’ll learn as time goes. But the time for that is done, and the choices now will be in your hands.”
“What choices?”
“So many, and some already made, as they brought you here. You came to the Welcoming Tree and went forward, not back, and so passed through the portal with Ireland and America and all the rest of that world on one side, and this world—your homeplace, Talamh—on the other.”
Breen nudged her wine aside. “This area’s called Tala? I haven’t heard of it.”
With some impatience Marg spelled it out. “Though you pronounce it well enough. It’s a world, as real and solid as any other. But we are not of the others, nor they of us. Some worlds are very old, some very young. Some embrace violence, others embrace peace. Some, as the world you were reared in most of your life, wish for machines and technology to both build and destroy. But here, we have chosen to abjure such things and hold on to the magicks, their powers and their beauties.”
Breen didn’t doubt this woman was her grandmother. The resemblance was too strong, and the grief when Marg had spoken of her son unquestionably real.
But that didn’t mean her grandmother wasn’t a little bit crazy.
“You’re actually talking about, what, a multiverse? That’s comic-book stuff.”
Marg slapped a hand on the table, made Breen jump. “Why are so many so arrogant they don’t just believe they’re all there is, but insist upon it?”
“Because science?”
“Bah. Science changes generation by generation—and more. Once in the realm of Earth the science said the world was flat—until they