she walked down to Morena.
“Why did you tell me you worked for the falconry school?”
“But I didn’t, did I?” Cocking a hip, Morena put her free hand on it. The gesture reeked of sarcasm. “You assumed that. You didn’t remember me, and that cut a bit even though Marg and my grandmother both said you wouldn’t. Not right off.”
She lifted her arm so the hawk winged up. As she started walking, she turned. “Are you after staying or going?”
“I’m going.”
“You promised you’d come back when you went away, but I stopped believing it, as you never tried.”
“I’m not going to take flak for that. How am I suddenly in the wrong when I’m the only one I can see who didn’t lie? And I was three, according to my grandmother, when I left Ireland for Philadelphia.”
“You left Talamh.”
“Oh God, not you, too!” Out of patience, Breen threw her hands in the air, turned a circle. “Is it something in the local water?”
“I could ask the same of where you’ve been, as I don’t understand how you could forget who you are, where you came from. I’m still holding a grudge about that.”
Morena’s tone mirrored Breen’s frustrated circle. “We played, you and I, in the woods around Marg’s cottage, and in the dooryard of the farmhouse where you lived until your father left and turned it over to the O’Broins. We had tea parties and picnics and shared secrets whispering at night when we were supposed to be sleeping.”
“I was three! I’m sorry I don’t remember. But you’re not helping by fostering my grandmother’s delusions about this being some sort of Brigadoon.”
As if waiting for an insult, Morena’s eyes narrowed to slits. “What’s a Brigadoon?”
“It’s a fantasy story about a place that only exists for one day every hundred years.”
“Oh, it sounds like a fine tale.” Mollified by it, Morena reached down to pat the dog that trotted along with them. “But this isn’t that, as we’re here all the time.”
“She put something in my wine.”
“Ah, don’t be a git. Why would she be doing that to her own kin?”
“It made me see her doing the impossible.”
“Well now, there’s not much impossible for the likes of Marg. She’s as powerful a witch as I know.”
As the crazy built around her, Breen considered pulling her own hair out. “Now you’re all witches? Look, I get Ireland’s got its folklore and its legends, but—”
“Ireland’s on the other side, and I’m not a witch. I’m of the Sidhe.”
“I can see you’re a woman.”
“Sidhe,” Morena repeated. “I’m of the faerie clan.”
“Faerie clan. Of course. I should’ve seen it right away.”
Unfazed, Morena lifted a hand in a wave toward Harken as he led a spotted cow to what Breen assumed was a barn.
“It’ll be easier on you going back through with me. Harken and Aisling said you took a turn coming through, and likely because you’d blocked it all out.”
With the hawk circling above, Morena hopped the stone fence.
For the first time, Breen saw steps carved into the rise leading up to the tree.
“I fell. I lost my balance and fell, that’s all.”
“As you like.”
Seven steps, Breen counted as she climbed them. Steps of rough stone with mica gleaming in the bright sunlight.
“I was going after the dog,” she said in her defense. “And distracted because the tree’s fascinating.”
She gripped one of its curving branches, tried to climb up as gracefully, effortlessly as Morena.
She felt herself start to fall, as if the ground vanished under her feet. Then Morena gripped her hand.
The next thing she knew she stood on the path under a soaking rain.
“I don’t understand how—”
“Because I’m thinking you don’t want to.” Temper, very visibly, began to rise and spew. “You don’t want to take back what’s yours by right, by blood, would rather close your eyes to it and pretend.”
“I think I’m standing on firmer ground than somebody who claims to live in an alternate reality as a freaking faerie.”
“Firmer ground, is it? You’d best hold on as we’re about to see about that.”
Before Breen could evade, Morena clamped an arm around her waist. They lifted off the ground.
“Oh God, oh my God.”
“Hold on, I said. You’re no bag of feathers.”
With that Morena flew through the rain, several feet over the path. Tongue lolling, the dog raced under them. The hawk cried overhead as he soared.
Instinctively, Breen reached out to grip Morena’s waist. Her hand brushed wings. Big, beautiful, luminous wings of violet edged in silver.
“I’m dreaming. This is all a dream.”
“My arse.”