On the journey, wrapped in grief, I hadn't given thought to it.
Now I did, and I was scared.
At last we climbed a smooth shaft into which hand and footholds had been carved. I could sense the presence of people above us and smell wood-smoke. At the top, other hands helped us.
We emerged into a large cavern. It wasn't wondrously sculpted, just ordinary rugged granite, but the scale was impressive. There was a cooking fire in the center beneath an opening to vent the smoke. At the far end, it opened onto sunlight and an expanse of blue sky.
"Moirin." Oengus embraced me. "Welcome."
I inclined my head. "Thank you, my lord Oengus."
A wizened old woman behind him burst into a cackling laugh. "Ah-ha-ha! Lord Oengus, is it? Listen to her, manners fit for a lady of the Dalriada!"
I flushed, hurt and angry and embarrassed.
"Peace, Nemed." Oengus gave her a sharp look. "The lass needs no reminding of her loss."
"Oh, aye." The old woman worked her shriveled lips in a chewing motion. "Forgive me, child. I'm old. I guided your mother through the rite, and her mother before her. Such a pity that one died young."
My mother took a deep breath. "Nemed….."
"I mean no harm, daughter of Eithne." She patted my mother's arm. "I was fond of your mother. You'll be blunt-spoken, too, come my age. Now." She tugged my hair with surprising strength. "Bend down and let me have a look at you."
Given no choice, I obeyed.
Nemed peered at me with rheumy eyes, clucking her tongue. "Look at you, caught all betwixt and between!" She sniffed at me. "You'll drive the lads mad, that's for sure. And mayhap a few of the lasses, too."
My mother made a strangled sound.
"Peace, Fainche." The old woman flapped one hand at her, the other still tangled in my hair. "You laid down with a D'Angeline. Are you so isolated in your hermitage that you've not heard what manner of mischief they get up to?"
"No," she said shortly.
I cleared my throat. My neck was getting stiff.
"Ah, right." Nemed let go my hair with reluctance, letting the length of it run over her crabbed fingers. "But you're here, eh? That's something." She shook her head. "What Herself will make of you, I've no idea."
I swallowed. "I pray She finds me worthy."
"It's not a question of worthy." The rheumy eyes were shrewd, but there was compassion in them. "It's a question of whether or not you're one of Her own. Do you believe so, daughter of Fainche?"
"I do," I said.
Nemed patted my hand. "We'll see, won't we?"
Although I had supposed it would be a large gathering like the pilgrimage to Clunderry, there were only two others present—a young woman named Camlan and a young man named Breidh. They were the last two members of the Maghuin Dhonn to have passed through the rite and tradition dictated their presence. Until the moment this was made clear to me, I hadn't realized men went through it, too.
"Of course!" Breidh looked surprised. "How not?"
"I don't know." I felt foolish. "You, ah….. how is the timing of it reckoned for men?"
Camlan giggled. "A year from the night they first spill their seed unwitting in their sleep." She nudged Breidh. "First but not last, eh?"
He shrugged. "Better our way than yours."
She rolled her eyes. "That's the truth!"
I wanted to feel at ease with them. They were of my people and my own age—and yet I was different. As easy as they were with each other, I could sense that they were uneasy with me.
"Come." Camlan took my arm, doing her best to overcome her discomfort. "Would you see the glade, Moirin?"
"Aye, please."
She led me to the far end of the cavern, Breidh trailing after us. The wide mouth opened onto a ledge that presided over a sharp decline. We were atop the very peak of the mountain. The glade lay below, a green bowl held in the cupped hand of the earth, dotted with pine trees. There was the lake, and there was the stone doorway.
I gazed at it.
It was a simple thing. Two great standing stones, taller than a man's height, with a slab laid across them. Its shadow slanted eastward toward us.
"How….." I hesitated. "I don't understand."
"There are worlds and there are worlds," Oengus said in his deep voice. Having joined us unseen, he sat on the ledge, dangling one leg over the drop. "When we call the twilight to us, we take half a step into the spirit world that lies alongside ours, the same and yet different. When you pass through the stone door, you take the whole step."
The younger two nodded, their expressions reverent.
"One day it may be that the folk of the Maghuin Dhonn will pass through it forever," Oengus mused. "Pass into myth and become spirit rather than flesh, haunting the hollow hills and the sacred places of Alba."
"But not today," I said.
He gave himself a shake, and a sideways glinting glance at me. "Not today, no."
We ate well that night. How they had known to expect us, I wasn't sure. I'd never known exactly how my mother kept contact with our people, and I didn't learn it that night, either. But there was a venison stew that had simmered all day, savory with leeks and herbs. "Eat," my mother said. "Tomorrow, you fast." And there was a jug of uisghe, and after it had gone around twice, it didn't matter to me how they had known. The warmth in my belly dispelled the memory of Cillian's cold lips.
When we had finished, Mabon played a haunting air on his pipe and we all listened in peaceful silence. Beyond the mouth of the cavern, darkness settled over the glade as though summoned by the sound of his playing. It came to me that this very scene might have taken place a thousand years ago—or five thousand years ago, before mankind thought to record its history.
I was part of a very, very ancient tradition.
The thought made me shiver—both for the wonder of it, and for fear of losing it. I gazed around at the firelit faces of my people and felt a sudden pang of kinship. The spark of the diadh-anam inside me blazed wildly.
"That's the spirit." Old Nemed patted my hand again and gave me a dubious look. "Mayhap She'll have you after all."
It wasn't terribly encouraging.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The rite itself was simple.
On the morrow, I fasted. Old Nemed gave me my instructions. When the sun began to set, my eyes would be anointed and she would give me a bowl of mushroom tea to drink. Once I had drunk it, I was to descend alone into the glade and pass through the stone door without looking right or left. Then I was to wait beside the lake until either the Maghuin Dhonn showed Herself to me, or I fell asleep.
Nemed gave me a sharp pinch. "So best you stay awake."
"Ow!" I rubbed my arm. "Is it a test, then? She'll come if I stay awake long enough?"
"She'll show Herself or not as She chooses," she said. "There's no sure way to make it happen." She gave my arm another vicious pinch. "But there is a sure way to fail."
I winced. "Your point is well taken, my lady."
Nemed snorted. "My lady!"
"Nemed….." I hesitated. "If I do fail….. I understand, a little, what will befall me. My gifts will fade, and I'll no longer feel welcome among us. What of this place?" I gestured around. "Will it be forbidden to me?"
"Ah, child," she murmured. "No. You will forget it."
I swallowed. "How so?"
The deep wrinkles around her eyes tightened. "I will pluck the memory from you myself," she said gently. "Such is my gift."
I shivered. "Show me." Nemed gave me a startled look. "I want to see. I want to know how it's done."
She chewed on her lips. "That's not wise."
"I want to know," I said stubbornly. "I want to know what I face, every last bit of it."
Nemed sighed. "Child….."
"Show her," my mother said softly. The old woman grumbled. My mother came over to my side and took my right hand in hers. "Here's a good one to choose." She turned my palm upward and stroked a tiny scar in the webbing of my thumb. "Remember how you got this?"
I nodded. "The deadfall." When I was six or seven, I'd tripped and fallen onto the stump of an alder tree that had toppled over. I'd put out my hand to catch myself and driven a splinter through it.
My mother kissed the faint mark and closed my hand over it. "That's not one you'll miss."
After more grumbling, Nemed acquiesced. "You'll have to hold the memory in your thoughts," she said. "It only works if you consent."
"What if I don't?" I asked. "I mean….. afterward?"
"If you fail?" she asked. I nodded. The gentleness returned to her tone. "If you fail, you'll give your consent willingly. Believe me, child. You'll want the memory of this place gone. They all do."
Her words chilled me more than anything else she'd said thus far. "Just show me."
"So be it." Nemed took my face in her gnarled hands and leaned in so close our noses almost touched. "Hold the memory and offer it freely."
I held it, willing her to take it. I remembered the halting jerk of a root catching my foot as I ran carelessly through the alder grove, and then the sudden shock of pain. Picking myself up from the ground and seeing the splinter run clean through the web of my hand. I remembered the dismay in my mother's voice and her hand clamped around my wrist, holding it immobile as she pulled out the splinter in one agonizing yank.
Nemed inhaled deeply.
Something elusive slithered in the space behind my eyes, slippery as an eel. I felt it spooling out of me and cried aloud at the sense of loss. And then the old woman swallowed and exhaled, blowing softly into the void the thing had left behind. A cool mist filled my thoughts and dissipated.
Nemed released me. "There you are."
"That's all?" I shook myself. "But you didn't do anything."
"Oh, aye?" She smiled dourly and picked up my right hand. "How did you come by yon scar?"
"That?" I glanced at it. "I don't recall. I've had it since I was little." I did remember, though; I remembered my mother folding my hand closed over it not two minutes ago, saying it wasn't a memory I'd miss. And it was gone, gone as surely as though it had never existed. My skin prickled. "Stone and sea!" I whispered. "That's a dire magic!"
"Aye." Nemed nodded. "So it is."
"And that, I suspect," Oengus said in a disapproving voice, appearing behind the old woman, "is why it works only on the consenting and ought never be used for aught but the most sacred purpose. Little over a hundred years ago, Alba and Terre d'Ange alike were nearly brought to their knees by the use of such magic."
Nemed made a dismissive sound. "That was altogether different and nothing to do with us."
Oengus folded his arms. "Nonetheless."
"Peace, both of you," my mother offered. "Moirin wanted to know and now she does. Mayhap the gift will pass to her one day. After all, it has to pass to someone."
"I'm not that old!" Nemed said sharply.
Oengus coughed. "You are, actually."
I let them bicker, rubbing the faint scar and gazing toward the end of the cavern. It seemed impossible that an entire memory was simply gone. I thought about the tale Oengus had mentioned. I knew it, of course; it was in one of the histories Cillian had brought me. Magicians from Carthage had stolen away the memories of the Cruarch of Alba and the entire peerage of Terre d'Ange and replaced them with falsehoods, and then stolen the Queen's heir. Terre d'Ange had sunk into madness. It was a terrible and wonderful tale, filled with star-crossed lovers and a demon trapped in a stone. And in the end, the enchantment had been undone and all was restored.
"Can you return it?" I asked Nemed.
She cocked her head. "Eh?"
"A memory," I said. "Can you put it back?"
"No, child." Nemed shook her head. "I can tell you what it was, but I can't restore it to you. I've no gift to hold another's memories to barter and trade, only to take what's offered. Once I've swallowed it, it's gone from you. Gone for good."
"Oh." I rubbed the scar with my opposite thumb. "All right, then."
The remainder of the day passed all too swiftly.
I ate no food, drank only water from a cistern deep within the hollow hill that Camlan and Breidh brought and offered to me in a brimming bucket with a wooden dipper. The water tasted like minerals and stone, but it was cold and good.
All too soon, the bright light at the end of the cavern took on a golden hue. Mabon, watching over the glade, turned to us. "It's time," he said simply.
Nemed beckoned, holding a jar of salve. "Where are the youngest?"
Camlan and Breidh came forward, dipping their fingers in the jar. I closed my eyes and let them smear the salve on my lids. It smelled sharp and stung a little.
"May you see Her true," they said in unison.
I blinked.
"Here." Nemed offered me a steaming bowl. I drank. The mushroom tea was acrid and bitter on my tongue. It warmed my empty belly, but it made me feel a little sick, too. Camlan and Breidh helped me to my feet.
"This way."
I let them guide me to the far end of the cavern. There, the open vista made me dizzy. I struggled to draw breath. The slope fell away at such a steep angle. Beneath me, the glade awaited. Already, the slanting sun threw the stone door's shadow across its green bowl, long and stark. Beyond the door, the lake glinted.