evading.
She brought the photo out to where Marg and Finola sat with the tea, and Bollocks sprawled under the table with one of his biscuits.
Breen stopped, staring down at the little squares of frosted cakes on the plate.
“The pink ones taste like roses.”
“They were always your favorite.” Smiling, Finola put two on a small plate. “I told you, didn’t I, the girl always had a fondness for my sweet cakes. Morena favored the blue ones, and the taste of a summer sky.”
Sitting, Breen offered the framed photo to Marg.
“Ah, look at my boy there, so handsome! And there’s your own Flynn with him, Fi.”
“And so it is! That’s Morena’s da there, with the pipe. And there’s Kavan—he who was the best of friends with your da, Breen, and father to Harken and Aisling, and they you met, and Keegan as well. And there’s Brian holding his bodhrán drum. And only my own Flynn with us still.”
“They’re . . . gone?”
“Brian long ago, and Kavan as well. It’s good to see them young and alive and doing what they loved doing.”
“I’ll make copies, and bring them. Will you tell me how he died, my father?”
“When you come and I take you to where we laid him to rest, we’ll talk of it. Can today not be for the sadness?” Marg asked her. “There are other questions buzzing in your mind. Pick one I can answer that doesn’t bring grief to tea and cakes.”
“All right. You’re of the Wise—that’s witches, right?”
“So I am. Once such as I am—and you are—were respected in the worlds. Until fears and greeds and envies and the like grew in those without powers. It’s not such in Talamh, where our gifts and skills and knowledge are given to help and heal and defend.”
“Okay, and you?” Breen turned to Finola. “Are one of the Sidhe?”
“We tend—the earth, the air, the growing things.”
“Is that it? I mean, as far as your world? Witches and faeries?”
“Oh, other tribes she’s meaning, Marg. We live, work, mate, defend, all as Fey, as people of Talamh, but we have other what you would think of as tribes. The Elfins—they tend as well, and prefer the forests and mountains to the fields and lowlands.”
“Elves. Like . . .” Fascinated, Breen held her hand a couple of feet from the ground. “Elves.”
“They’re not the little ones with pointed ears the storybooks in your world would make them,” Marg said. “Nor are the weres the thing of nightmares who transform under the full moons to attack and kill.”
“Weres? Like werewolves?”
“A were has a spirit animal, and can become—at his will—a wolf, a hawk, a bear, a dog, a cat, and so on.”
“The mers,” Finola added, clearly enjoying herself as she nibbled on a cake. “Who live in, tend, and guard the waters. The trolls who mine.”
“And with all these, there are abilities,” Marg continued. “A troll may have the ability to communicate with animals, though this is more likely to be found in a witch, an elf, a faerie. A were might have dream visions. We have what the gods give us.”
Fascinating, Breen decided. Not frightening now, not impossible now. Just fascinating. “What gods?”
“There are many. Even in your world you give them different names, purposes, lore.”
“Did they make the tree? The Welcoming Tree?”
“This was an agreement between the realms of man and gods and Fey, and choices made more than a thousand years ago. The portals were a way to travel from world to world, but worlds change, and more choices had to be made.”
“What kind of choices?”
“In this world such as we began to be persecuted and hunted and murdered.”
“Witch trials.” That was history, Breen thought. Solid and inarguable. “Burnings and hangings and drownings.”
Marg nodded. “And most who suffered those fates had no power at all. I think a kind of madness came over the realm of men. We were to be feared and damned—then we were simply stories and superstitions. This world, as worlds will, pursued a different path. Machines became a kind of god, technology a kind of sorcery—and the true magicks faded to shadows. The Fey of Talamh chose to preserve what they are, choosing the magicks over this progress.”
“But I went through, and you came through this way. My mother, you said, lived in Talamh. Is she Fey?”
“She’s of this world.” At ease now, Marg poured more tea.
“She came through willingly to ours for love of your father. No one can be brought in without their full consent—that is law.