Chapter Eight
“Hand me that trowel over there.” Bridget strained as she stooped over a low bed she busily planted with Bearded Tulips every spring – a special variety created by splicing tulips with irises and then adding a sprinkling of Sidhe magic.
She loved changing out the colors amongst the numerous plots surrounding our family home. While our parents’ absence left our lives incomplete, it still felt like home in the mound at Finias.
Two years had gone by since our father disappeared after scouting a location for a new Sidhe village. The old clans of the Irish families we watched over were spreading farther with each year. While Sidhe have powers to move over vast distances in little time, our father, Delvin, repeatedly insisted in council meetings on the need to hide in the open. He told the rest of the Inner Ring that the old ways of living in hidden preserves would have to end as less and less open land could be concealed from technology. At what point would the wilderness areas be paved and our protections eradicated? His answer? Live within the human world and mask ourselves as human. Besides, our Sidhe ancestors used to live side-by-side with humans and that worked for some time.
The older High Sidhe thought he was a lunatic, but some of the younger members agreed with Father and allowed him to begin searching for a community in which to settle a test-group of Sidhe.
We had not seen or heard from him since that warm, summer morning he left in search of a new home. We were orphaned. Mother disappeared years before. Many rumors about her fate still flitted around Finias—suicide, abduction, becoming mortal—you name it, and it was discussed as truth.
Such thoughts filled my head as I stared off at the green fields of wildflowers and grass surrounding the mound, preventing me from hearing Bridget’s request until the third time she shouted.
“Morgan! Hand me that trowel!”
“Oh, sorry.” I delicately handed the tiny shovel to her—handle first, of course.
I went back to sitting nearby on a rotting log, shoulders slumped forward as I shielded my body from the crisp spring air. I watched Bridget dig, transfer the bulbs to a worn sheet of canvas next to her, and then continue with the next bulb.
“I hope I can get all of this done. I need to get going if I’m going to put together that potion for the Inner Ring before bedtime.”
“A potion? What for?” I asked. Bridget was a Nurturer and often was called on for healing potions or identifying plants, but a potion for the Inner Ring? I knew it must be something significant.
“Something to do with problems in the Northern regions. Creatures appearing that should not be freely roaming. The potion should help track them down.” Bridget squinted in the sunlight, her nose crinkling like it always did.
“What kind of creatures?”
Bridget shrugged. “I don’t really know, but when the Ring asks for something, it’s my duty to help.”
“I see,” I said. Everything Bridget did revolved around what was right for the clan. I didn’t know if Bridget would understand my current dilemma, but I didn’t have anyone else to turn to. I figured that now was as good of a time as any to ask. “Bridge, do you ever wonder what it’s like for them?” I fiddled with a long blade of grass that drifted between my knees.
“Like for who?” Her eyes didn’t shift; her hands continued their monotonous work.
“You know,” I hesitated, worried I was going to sound like an idiot, but since I already started, I would look even more like an idiot for not finishing. “Mortals.”
Bridget paused in her work, dusted off her perfectly tailored gardening gloves on her matching mint green apron, and gave me an assuring smile. “I suppose I have—once in a while. I guess every time I’m out here working the soil with my hands rather than doing things the easy way, I’m dabbling in my idea of what life is like for them.”
“Oh. Okay.” I fidgeted with the hem of my knee-length dress, avoiding my sister’s careful eyes.
“Just, okay?” Bridget prodded between shovels of dirt. “Come on, Morgan. What is it you are really wondering about?”
I watched the verdant grass that slipped between my toes as I slowly moved my bare feet back and forth. “I wasn’t really – well, I was not really asking – what I meant was...” I sighed before continuing. “What do you think it’s like for them… as in… death?”
Bridget’s head dropped slightly, but enough for me to know that she was not pleased with this turn in the conversation. “Death?” The word slithered off the end of her tongue as if it was a filthy sock she held out with the tips of her fingernails.
“Yeah, their death.” Now that it was out there, I felt a little relieved. I wanted to ask Bridget about mortal deaths ever since I saw Aidan in the woods. “What would it be like to only live for fifteen years and then have it taken away from you? Was it this hard for you on your first keen?”
“They’re mortals, Morg.” Another bulb plopped onto the canvas. “My first was keening Aidan’s great-grandmother. But all of my subsequent calls meant nothing more or less than the first. They are simply a job to complete—a mission to fulfill. Once you sing a soul to the Otherworld, you’ll see that keening is an important task, but not one with which we should become emotionally involved.”
“It’s not that I’m… involved.” My cheeks burned as I strained to explain myself. “It’s just that I look at Aidan and I wonder how fair it can be that he has to die. Where is the sense in a fifteen-year-old’s death?”
“Why are you worrying about something like that? All mortal creatures go through the cycle, and we see it all around us in the natural world.” She shrugged and went back to digging up bulbs. “Once you’ve foretold the death of your first mortal, the rest of your assignments seem fairly unremarkable. Trust me. Aidan will be just another name on a list of many.”
I couldn’t believe what she was saying. Bridget, my normally compassionate sister talked of human deaths as though it was extinguishing a fire, plucking a blade of grass, scattering the dried seeds of the dandelion. I expected this kind of response from Branna – which is exactly why I did not go to Branna with the question – but Bridget? I thought Bridget would understand. I thought Bridget could bring comfort.
“Something wrong, Morg?”
I swallowed deeply, trying to control anger that boiled in my belly, urging for release. Clenching my lips tight, I managed a quick, “No. You’re right.”
I excused myself from helping with the spring plantings, muttering something about studying I needed to finish, and stumbled out of the garden. I brushed past Branna, who spoke with a red-cloaked Sidhe outside the mound’s front door. Into our home I dashed, averting my tearing eyes from Branna’s suspicious gaze. I fell onto my bed in a heap, coughing cries into the pillow.
“Unremarkable?” I spoke the word into my suffocating pillow, still unable to believe Bridget’s upsetting words. I turned over and stared up at the ceiling, arms crossed over my heaving chest. “I have to take part in someone’s death and that’s just ordinary?”
I wished Mother was there to console me or that Father would return and take me out to the hidden desert caves like he used to every Saturday morning.
Father would understand. Didn’t he always say that he thought there must be some mortal blood in his line somewhere?
I turned to the white orb hovering on my nightstand. Within the orb floated Father’s prize-possession he left with me the summer morning that he left. I begged him not to go, and then he pulled the silver coin from his pants pocket and put it in the palm of my hand.
“My promise that I’ll be back.” His last whisper and a kiss on the forehead, his crinkled eyes promising more outings and lessons. The coin – the first human money he ever owned – a guarantee that he would be back to Finias the following Saturday.
Two years later and the coin still hovered, suspended and protected in the white, swirling orb of moonlight. Every night I still stared at the treasure and spoke to him as though he could hear
from wherever he was. I told myself that he would soon return.
Daddy, please come home. I can’t do this alone.