Morrighan - Mary E. Pearson Page 0,11

the concealed valley to be with her. She consumed my thoughts and dreams. Everything had changed between us the day she held my slingshot and I placed my arms around her. It frightened me, this change, the way it made me feel and even think differently, but every day since then, as I rode to the valley, all I could think of was holding her again, kissing her, listening to her, watching her laugh.

Just as she had since the first time I saw her, she fascinated me, except that now I needed her like a raven needs the sky. It was a dangerous game we played, and from the beginning, we had known it couldn’t last, but now I wondered. She wondered. We talked about it. Love. Was that what this was? I love you, Jafir, she would say at any moment of the day, just to hear it said aloud. She would laugh and then say it again, her eyes solemn, looking into mine. I love you, Jafir de Aldrid. And it didn’t matter how many times she said it, I waited for her to say it again.

“Now what do you hear?” she asked, her hands resting on my chest.

I heard nothing but the distant chirp of a beetle, the ruffle of my horse’s breath, the swish of meadow grass in the breeze—and then she placed a berry in my mouth, sweet and juicy. “It calls to you, Jafir. It whispers, a voice riding the wind, Here I am, come find me. Listen.”

But all I heard was a different kind of knowing, one that even Morrighan couldn’t hear, a knowing that felt as sure and old as the earth itself. It whispered deep within my gut, I am yours, Morrighan, forever yours … and when the last star of the universe blinks silent, I will still be yours.

Chapter Ten

Morrighan

From the time I was small, Ama had told the stories of Before. Hundreds of stories. Sometimes it was to prevent me from crying and revealing our hiding place in the darkness when the scavengers ranged too near, desperate whispers in my ear that helped keep me silent. More often, at the end of a long day, she told them to satisfy me when there was no food to fill my belly.

I clung to her stories, even if they were of a world I didn’t know, a world of sparkling light and towers that reached to the sky, of kings and demigods who flew among the stars—and princesses. Her stories made me richer than a ruler in a great kingdom. Stories were the one thing she gave me that couldn’t be stolen, not even by a scavenger.

Once upon a time child,

Long, long ago,

Seven stars were flung from the sky.

One to shake the mountains,

One to churn the seas,

One to choke the air,

And four to test the hearts of men.

A thousand knives of light,

Grew to an explosive rolling cloud,

Like a hungry monster.

Only a little princess found grace,

A princess just like you.…

Ama said the storm lasted for three years. When it was over, few were left to tell of it. Fewer still cared to speak of it. Survival was all that mattered. She was only a small child herself when the storms began, her memory shaky, but she filled in the details with what she had learned along the way, more parts filled in by the need of the moment, and the message was always the same. A blessed Remnant survived—would always survive—no matter the hardship.

Other things survived too. Things we had to watch for. Things that sometimes made my faith in the Remnant waver, like when Papa was struck down, trampled by a horse; when Venda was stolen; when Rhiann lost a baby goat and her life with the single slash of a knife.

These became stories too, and Ama charged us to tell them, saying, We have already lost too much. We must never forget from where we came, lest we repeat history. Our stories must be passed to our sons and daughters, for with but one generation, history and truth are lost forever.

And so I told the stories to Jafir as we explored the very small canyon that was our world.

“I have never heard of glass towers,” he said when I told him about where Ama once lived.

“But you’ve seen the ruins, haven’t you? The skeletons that once held the walls of glass?”

“I have seen skeletons. That is all. There are no stories to go with them.” I could hear the shame