Her mother said the same thing each of the few times she’d come into the trees to visit. The two-room dwelling was just as Una’s parents had left it. They had taken their prize bed with them and the little furniture they’d accumulated.
Being a home that had been passed down through the generations in their family, it was not sparse. Even with her parents’ things gone, the dwelling felt lived-in. Cupboards held dishes enough for two, though Una only used one. There was no cooking fire of course, all cooking had to be done at ground level, but dry foods could be and were stored on the few shelves and in the crannies.
Una had moved the furs she’d used to sleep on the floor of the main room since she was a child into the small bedroom, along with her clothing and personal things. The main room had the natural seats created by the branches of the tree integrated into their home and a small table her great-grandfather had made.
“Would you like water?” Una asked her mother with hospitality that was rarely exercised.
“Yes, dear, but I’ll get it myself.” Her mother moved to the swollen skin, filled from the water-catchers the Éan had placed high in the trees. “You must make this dwelling your own. One day you will share it with a mate.”
Una was only nineteen, but she’d long given up hope of finding a mate. Though she never said so to her mother. The thought of trusting another to sleep beside her filled her with a dread she’d never give voice to.
“Is Father already at the royal abode?”
Mòrag grimaced. “He is, giving Prince Eirik an earful about the wolves, if I have my guess.”
“What have they done now?”
“Naught, but to hear your father tell it, each one of them is responsible for every bad turn in our village, from the birth of a deformed kid by the neighbor’s goat to the deluge of rain we suffered through this past spring.”
“They have only been here a month.” And summer was well on its way to the solstice.
Mòrag shrugged and then smiled tolerantly. “You know your father.”
“Are the wolf soldiers . . . are they . . .”
“Kind?” her mother prompted.
Una could not imagine it, despite the way Bryant behaved when she’d met him in the spirit realm. After all, Una acted with far more boldness there than was her usual wont.
“Violent?” she asked instead.
“Not at all. Oh, they’re good hunters and strong warriors, but they are kind and rather more polite than our own soldiers.”
“They live among the civilized humans.” She never said civilized the way her father did, with a sneer in his voice.
But Una’s mother acknowledged Fionn’s attitude with a frown they both understood. “They do, though it has not made them any less fierce. The one they call Bryant smiles more than I’ve ever seen a warrior smile though. He seems to want to make friends particularly with your father. I cannot imagine why; Fionn has been rude to him at every turn.”
Una’s breath caught at the mention of the man she’d only met while sleeping.
“The wolves who took me smiled, too.” With sneers and cold evil in their compassionless eyes that she would never forget.
“Not all wolves are like the men who took you.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Of course, I do not put them all in the same school of fish just because they share a wolf nature.” As much as she might shy from Bryant were she to meet him in the flesh, she would not think him capable of the cruelty she’d suffered at the hands of his fellow wolves.
Mòrag looked very sad. “Sweeting, I very much fear that you do.”
“That would make me like them, Mother, hating an entire race.”
“You are nothing like those men, but neither are these clansmen.” Mòrag smoothed Una’s already shining hair. “You look so lovely this eve.”
Una ignored the compliment, choosing to focus instead on her mother’s other words. “Father doesn’t like them.”
“Your father hates all wolves for what those horrible Faol who took you did to you.”