the gods, sit on the pair of them if they don’t rest for a bit.”
Gealbhan had only to touch his wife’s cheek, to take Brannaugh’s hand to have them heed. “What must be done?” he asked Teagan.
“An offering. An asking. A gathering. He cannot come here. Cabhan cannot come here, or see here. Here he has no power. And here, we can gather ours together.”
“What do you need?”
“You are the best of us.” She kissed his cheek. “If you would help Eamon, I promise you Brannaugh and I will bide here, will rest.”
When he’d gone, she turned quickly to Brannaugh. “You have pain.”
“It’s not the birthing pains. You’ll learn the babe often gives you a bit of a taste of what’s coming. This will pass. But the rest is welcome. What we will do here will take strength.”
They took an hour, to rest, to prepare.
“We must cast the circle,” she told Eoghan, “and make the offering. Do not fear for me.”
“Would you ask me not to breathe?”
“It is your love, your faith, and Gealbhan’s with yours we need.”
“Then you have it.”
They cast the circle, and the cauldron floated over the fire they made. Water flowed from Teagan’s hands into the cauldron. Brannaugh added herbs, Eamon crushed stones.
“These come from the home we made.”
“And these.” Teagan opened a pouch, poured in the precious. “From the home we seek. Small things, a dried flower, a pebble, a bit of bark.”
“More than gold or silver treasured. We offer to you. Here, a lock of hair from my firstborn.”
“A feather from my guide.” Eamon added it to the now bubbling cauldron.
“This charm my mother made me.”
“Ah, Teagan,” Brannaugh murmured.
“She would wish it.” Teagan added it to the offering.
“To you we give what we hold dear, and add to them this witch’s tear. And seal with blood this brew to show our hearts are true.”
And each with a sacred knife offered their blood, and with it the bubbling cauldron boiled and smoked.
“Father, mother, blood of our blood and bone of our bone, we orphans have faith forever shown. Grant us here in this holy place, in this holy hour the might and right of your power. With your gift we cannot fail and over Cabhan will prevail. Imbue us now, we witches three. As we will, so mote it be.”
The wind had stirred inside the walls. The candlelight gone brilliant. But at the final words the three spoke together, the wind whirled, the light flashed.
The voices that had murmured, rang out.
With her siblings Brannaugh clasped hands, with them she dropped to her knees.
It ripped through her, the light, the voices, the wind. And the power.
Then came silence.
She rose again, and with Teagan and Eamon turned.
“You were alight,” Eoghan said in wonder. “Like candles yourselves.”
“We are the three.” Teagan’s voice rose and echoed in the humming silence. “But there are many. Many before us, many who come after.”
“Their light is ours; ours is theirs.” Eamon lifted his arms, his sisters’ high. “We are the three, and we are one.”
Filled with light, fatigue vanished, suffused, Brannaugh smiled. “We are the three. We cast our light over the dark, we seek it out of its shadows. And we will prevail.”
“By our blood,” they said together, “we will prevail.”
• • •
IN THE MORNING, IN THE SOFT LIGHT OF DAY, THEY SET OUT again. They traveled the road with green hills rising, with water shining blue under a welcoming sun. Toward the grand gray stones of Ashford they rode, where the gates were open for them, the bridge drawn down, and the sun shined bright over the water, over the land of their birth.
And so Sorcha’s children came home.
3
Winter 2013
BRANNA O’DWYER WOKE TO A GRAY, SOGGY, RELENTLESS rain. And wished for nothing more than to burrow in and sleep again. Mornings, she had always felt, came forever too soon. But like it or not, sleep was done, and with its leaving came a slow and steady craving for coffee.
Annoyed, as she was often annoyed by morning, she rose, pulled thick socks over her feet, drew a sweater over the thin T-shirt she’d slept in.
Through habit and an ingrained tidiness, she stirred up the bedroom fire so the licks of flame would cheer the room, and with her hound, Kathel, having his morning stretch on the hearthrug, she made her bed, added the mounds of pretty pillows that pleased her.
In her bath, she brushed out her long fall of black hair, then bundled it up. She had work, and plenty of