lit the candle Mallick had given her as a baby, to keep that spark of light constant, to keep the dark at bay.
When the fractured sleep and strain began to show, Lana made up charms and potions for rest, but Fallon didn’t use them. Though it lied and lied, there might be something said or thought she could use to end it.
But when?
Come now, it murmured. Come to me through the crystal. I wait to embrace you. We’re meant to be as one, meant to know all pleasure, all power. Your blood released me. Come drink of the freedom you unlocked. Take it, taste it, know it.
She woke, found herself standing, staring into the crystal that swirled with shadows. Had she been reaching for it? She couldn’t be sure, but it had through nights and nights of stalking, found some weakness.
Shaken, she held her hand over the candle flame so that small light brightened, brightened and cleared the shadows.
She needed to take action, to try again.
She dressed, gathered all she needed, and went out into the night. Though summer held gamely on past the equinox, she scented the first hints of fall. Before long the harvest, the gathering, the sweep of color over the trees.
Thinking of it brought a deep yearning for the farm, the rambling house, the fields, the garden, the woods that had once held every adventure she could have wanted.
Would she see it again? Would she ever again sit under a tree with her nose in a book and her fishing line in the water? She wanted to know her mother would work the garden again, her father the fields. Wanted to know there would be bread dough rising in the kitchen, candles lit in windows.
She’d done all that had been asked of her, she thought. How much longer did she have to wait?
She went into the stables thinking to fly Laoch, but found the faithful Grace, already awake, her head—so much gray on the muzzle now—over the stall door.
“You couldn’t sleep, either?” Fallon stroked her cheek, saw a world of love and patience in Grace’s eyes. “All right then, you and me, just like we used to.”
She saddled the horse, stowed her tools in the saddlebag. “No hurry,” she said as she led Grace out, mounted. “We can take a nice easy walk.”
But when they reached the road, Grace broke into a trot, brisk as a filly. “I guess you’re not feeling your age tonight.”
As if to prove it, Grace lengthened into a smooth, rolling gallop. And nothing, Fallon realized, could have cleared the strain and fatigue more completely.
For just a little while, she was a girl again, and Grace a young filly. It wasn’t the woods, the fields of home they rode, but there was freedom in the night, in the beating heart of the land, in the joyful speed of a faithful horse.
And in the absolute quiet broken only by the brisk beat of hooves, the soft, stirring sigh of the breeze over rows of corn, wheat, through trees and grasses.
Starlight sprinkled down on pumpkins growing fat on vines, on plump grapes in vineyards, glowed in the eyes of deer grazing late, on the slink of a fox on the hunt.
She heard the cry, looked up to see the wide, white spread of Taibhse’s wings, the silver glint of Laoch’s. Faol Ban leaped out of the shadows to pace the horse. Even the dregs of the dream faded as they made the last turn to New Hope.
She slowed Grace to a trot again, then to a walk as they approached the gardens.
“I don’t know why I wanted to try this here,” she said aloud. “Maybe just because nowhere else has worked.”
After dismounting, she slung the saddlebag over her shoulder. “And I have to try.”
She cast the circle, brought white candles to flame with her breath. In the center, she placed a small statue of the mother goddess, and her offering of wine and flowers.
With her athame she gestured north.
“Powers of the north, hear me. Powers of the east, I beseech thee. Powers of the south, I call to thee. Powers of the west, see me. I am your daughter. I am your servant. I am your warrior. I cast this circle in faith, in trust, in respect, and in honor.”
In the center of the circle, she floated a small cauldron, filled it with blessed water, spread the flames under it. From a pouch she sprinkled crystal dust over the water’s surface.