A Rush of Wings, page 9
One by one, they stepped out into the fog, Gawen in front and Rowenna coming last. Nothing was said to sort out the order in which they proceeded, but a look passed between Rowenna and Gawen as they flanked the rest of the boys, as if to protect them from what lay ahead and what might follow along from behind.
Somewhere above, the moon was surely shining. It would have been impossible to see, otherwise. But the occasional lonely tree cast long shadows, and when the breeze managed to tear a rent in the fog, Rowenna could see her brothers walking along before her, no more than five paces between any of them for fear of losing one another in the mist. The moonlight made them over into haunted versions of themselves, and a sudden, creeping chill washed over Rowenna. It felt like a glimpse of the future—of what might happen if she failed to break Mairead’s curse, and the boys were left to languish in the inhuman forms they’d been bound to.
Voices whispered in the fog, and Rowenna couldn’t be sure if it was the wind or others out wandering the moor at night, or if the souls of the restless dead were speaking. But she didn’t dare ask her brothers if they heard it too. Finn was already on edge, and she would not say anything that might push him further into fear.
At last the fog broke, and they found themselves coming out on the moor’s opposite side, near an ivy-clad and tumbledown church.
“Where’s Gawen?” Rowenna asked sharply, glancing at her brothers and finding him missing.
Duncan and Liam cast about themselves.
“He was just here,” Duncan said in bewilderment. “I followed him all the way. Didn’t take my eyes from him once until I heard Finn come up behind me. Perhaps he needed to use the bushes?”
“Don’t move,” Rowenna warned. Something had begun to tug at her, like that night she’d searched for Cam and Duncan. It pulled insistently, drawing her back toward the mist. “Every one of you, stay just where you are until I get back. I’m going to find my stray.”
Before any of them could speak, she plunged into the fog, following that familiar pull. Rowenna did not call out—she had no need of her voice when her craft led her so. Instead she stumbled over hummocks of land, bypassing clumps of heather and trying her best to keep a straight course as she followed the invisible, ineffable sense that drew her along.
Beware, behold, be still, the wind sighed, as it ran mournfully across Drumossie. Here is your lost one, your missing piece, the wayward soul we brought to you.
The fog cleared for a moment, driven before the breeze, and Rowenna caught sight of Gawen on his knees among the heather.
“You are not allowed to be lost,” she said, closing the little distance between them and dropping down at his side. “I forbid it. I found you once. Now’s a second time. And I will keep on finding you, if need be, because you seem to be the one thing I can find.”
“It’s not me who’s lost, though.” Gawen’s voice was a cold, dead thing, as lifeless and dreary as the draping fog. “It’s him. It’s all of them, sinking under the earth here, with no markers to show where they fell. They’d no peace in their lives, or in their dying, and they have none now in their decay.”
Rowenna looked down and saw that before them, some creature had been scrabbling at the earth. On the newly turned soil there rested the leathery remains of a human hand and a riven skull, yellowed bone showing through tatters of old flesh.
“This is haunted land,” Rowenna said with a shudder. “And you’re still living. Leave the dead to themselves. Come away with me.”
“I will.” Gawen sounded far away as he spoke, and he kept his eyes fixed on the sad, lonely bones before them. “But we’ve got caught up in each other’s troubles, scold, like moths tangled in webs that weren’t of their making. Drumossie casts a shadow over you now too—sure as your monster casts a shadow over me.”
Together, they got up from the damp earth. Rowenna kept near enough to Gawen that their arms nearly touched, as if she could bind him to her by that closeness.
“How are all your broken bits?” she asked as they made for the edge of the moor, where the rest of the boys were waiting.
“Better than my spirits,” Gawen said, but dark humor lurked behind the words, and Rowenna knew that for the moment, whatever despair had come over him was once again past.
Chapter Ten
The church at the edge of Drumossie Moor had been half ruined by cannon fire. Its vestry lay in a crumble of stone, revealing an interior door that led to the nave. Thick ivy ran over the cracking walls, and shards of tinted glass still gleamed from where the mullioned windows had blown out.
Rowenna stood poised on the doorstep as her brothers hung back, but Gawen stopped her with a hand on her arm.
“Wait,” he said. “Let me go in first.”
Rowenna stepped aside. As Gawen opened the door, the decaying wood around its hinges finally gave way, and it fell inward with a hollow thud. Half a dozen pigeons burst into flight from within the nave, winging their way skyward in a flurry of feathers and soft, disconcerted sounds. For the first time Rowenna realized that much of the church’s roof had collapsed, leaving only the outer walls.
“You said you knew a church we could shelter in,” Liam said doubtfully. He had his hands in the pockets of his breeches and his shoulders hunched. “This is a ruin—just an empty shell.”
The breeze kicked up, bringing a gust of dank air from the back of the churchyard.
“No use fussing,” Duncan said. “If it’s as good as we can get, we’ll make do.”
He strode into the open, roofless sanctuary and paused in a pool of moonlight. Something in Rowenna twisted as she watched him—all tussled hair and sea-glass eyes and anger. There’d never been much closeness between Rowenna and Liam, but she and Duncan were always on each other’s side.
Or they had been, until now.
“Wait,” she said softly, going after him as Liam and Finn settled in the vestibule, where there was still enough roof to keep off rain. “Duncan, can I speak to you?”
But he rounded on her, harsh and furious.
“No, Enna. You can’t. In fact, I don’t want a word with you until all of this is over. Until this curse, or whatever it is you’ve done to us, is undone. So don’t try to make things better when you’re the one who broke them in the first place.”
“It wasn’t me,” Rowenna insisted, balling her hands into fists until her nails dug into her palms. “By God in heaven, I didn’t do this. It was—”
She stopped abruptly.
“Who, Enna?” Duncan said belligerently, his words a challenge. “Who else could possibly have done this?”
“It was Màthair,” Rowenna blurted out before she could stop herself. “She did it.”
And in that instant, the disappointment and reproach she’d seen in her brothers turned to disgust.
“Màthair knew what she was doing with her craft. She never had to be kept ignorant because of her temper, like you,” Duncan shot back, at the same time as Liam drew himself up to his full height.
“What reason,” Liam said, “could Màthair possibly have to do such a thing? When she’d just come home to us? It makes no sense, Enna. Speak the truth and we’ll think better of you for it.”
“She’d have no reason to do this if it was really her who’d come home,” Rowenna insisted. Speak the truth she would, though she knew Liam’s promise to be a lie—they would not think better of her for it. “But I saw her die. And that thing that’s come back in her body? That’s not Mairead Winthrop. It’s something else. Something monstrous.”
“Is she mad?” Duncan asked, looking past Rowenna at Liam.
Liam shook his head. “I don’t know. After what happened to Màthair, she said something similar. Something about a monster. I thought it was just grief then, and needing to lay blame. But Màthair coming back clearly made things worse, and set her off again.”
For the first time since leaving home, Duncan looked at Rowenna with something like pity.
“Were you trying to protect us then, Enna? From this monster you think you saw?”
Rowenna shut her eyes. Tears tracked down her face as she thought of how she might answer.
No. It wasn’t my doing. And while you’re losing time under this curse, Athair’s been left behind with that creature.
But it would only sound like madness to the two of them. Further proof that her grasp on reality was slipping.
“Yes,” Rowenna lied, her voice breaking on the word. “I was trying to keep you safe, and I never meant for any of this to happen. But I’ll see it set right, I promise.”
With that, she hurried out of the ruined church. She could not bear to have her brothers or Gawen see her cry—not when they were the cause of it. So she skirted the edge of the church and, finding an overgrown tangle of a graveyard at its rear, let herself in through the rusted gate. It wailed mournfully on its hinges, but then Rowenna was past and into the tall grasses, where headstones listed at odd angles or lay shattered upon the earth.
Seating herself with her back to one such stone, Rowenna drew her knees up to her chest and buried her face in her arms. She took in breath after sobbing breath, trying to imagine that the grave marker behind her was one of Mairead’s wards and that none of this had happened. That they were all, even her mother, home and safe and well. That uncanny creatures existed only in fairy stories and legend, and the world was kind and straightforward and good.
The worst of her grief had passed by the time she became aware of a rhythmic sound coming from the far end of the graveyard. Drying her eyes on one sleeve of the fraying pullover she wore, Rowenna got to her feet and cast about herself.
There, in the shadows of a little copse that grew right up to the edge of the graveyard’s dry stone wall, was a stranger. He was towheaded and freckled, on the cusp of adulthood, and behind him a tethered horse pulled contentedly at the long grass. It was the serene sound of the horse at its dinner that had caught her attention. The boy himself was eating an apple with evident enjoyment, and as Rowenna’s gaze met his, he smiled. It was an honest, disarming sort of smile—a farm boy’s smile, and in spite of everything, Rowenna couldn’t help but feel a little warmed by it.
“I didn’t like to interrupt,” the boy said in the broader, flatter accent of the hill country away south. “You obviously needed a bit of time. Better now?”
Rowenna sniffed. She felt wrung out and abominably tired after everything that had happened over the past days. But as she opened her mouth to answer the stranger, a sudden realization dawned on her—without a voice by daylight, perhaps it would be best to keep silent. If she could not convince her own brothers that she hadn’t been the source of this curse, how would she convince others if they discovered her peculiar daytime affliction?
So rather than speak, Rowenna only nodded.
“Come and sit,” the farm boy offered, patting the space on the wall next to him.
Reluctantly Rowenna drew closer.
“Apple?” the boy offered, pulling one from a satchel. “You look as if you could use it.”
After two days without food, Rowenna’s mouth set to watering just at the thought. She took the proffered apple and settled down on the wall, carefully keeping space between herself and the boy.
As she bit into the fruit, the tart flavor of it filled her mouth, and she sighed.
“What is it that’s bothered you so?” the boy asked. “Can I help at all?”
He had a straightforward and reassuring way about him. Though the horse cropping the grass was a fine one, the boy wore loose, belted trousers and a homespun woolen shirt, and up close Rowenna could see the flecks of green in his hazel eyes.
Rowenna shook her head, taking another bite of apple.
“What’s your name?” the boy asked. “No one should be out on their own when they feel so low.”
Helplessly Rowenna shrugged.
“Are you mute, then?”
A nod.
“Were you born that way?” He certainly was one for questions. Rowenna shook her head.
“Did it happen in an accident? Or through some illness?” No again.
The boy’s voice went very soft. “Is it a curse?”
Rowenna stiffened and sprang from the wall, ready to flee from him if need be.
“Don’t be afraid.” The boy hurried to reassure her, holding both hands up disarmingly. “It’s only, my mother had a bit of craft. It runs in my family, and I spent enough time around those with power to learn the look of someone under a curse.”
Rowenna shivered. It had never occurred to her that the curse might be apparent to some, just as Mairead’s true nature was apparent to her when most did not perceive it.
“Are you wanting help? Because I know someone who might be able to put an end to your troubles,” the boy offered. “She’s not far from here either, just in Inverness. Her name’s Elspeth Crannach and she is—was—a cailleach. Someone wise, someone with power. If anyone can tell you how to get your voice back, it’ll be her.”
A surge of hope flooded through Rowenna.
“Here,” the boy offered. “Take this.”
He reached into his satchel and pulled out a round silver medallion, with swirling circles and spirals etched onto its tarnished surface.
“If you give that to Elspeth, she’ll know I’m the one who sent you, and she’ll be sure to help. She’s close to me and I to her. And perhaps if you’re in Inverness for a time, I’ll see you there too. I’ve been away, but it’s where I’m headed now.”
Rowenna clutched the medallion and nodded, wide-eyed. After the anger she’d met with from her brothers lately, she’d not expected to find compassion in a stranger.
“Do you have people nearby, and will you be all right if I go?” the boy asked, concern written across his simple face. “I don’t like to leave you otherwise.”
Rowenna managed a reassuring smile and gestured to the church. The boy got to his feet and slipped the reins back over his fine horse’s head. Then, with an ease born of practice, he swung himself up into the saddle.
“Elspeth Crannach,” he reminded Rowenna. “I’m sure she can help you, and you’ll be glad to have met her. Just follow the road west, and you’ll find your way to the city.”
The horse chafed at its bit, and the boy patted the creature’s neck. “Well, I hate to go. And I hope from now on life treats you better than it did this night. Till Inverness, if the fates will it.”
Rowenna stood and watched him ride away, the horse’s movement light and fluid, the boy sure in the saddle. At last the night swallowed them up. She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling suddenly bereft. There was only her family now, and Gawen with his grief, all of them bound together by this curse and dependent upon Rowenna to find a way to break it.
Wearily she turned back to the church.
Within its shadowed interior, the Winthrop boys were sleeping. They’d found a pair of torn altar cloths somewhere, and clearly Liam had deemed it acceptable in the eyes of God to make use of them in a time of need. Duncan lay huddled beneath one, Liam and Finn beneath the other.
At first, Rowenna saw no sign of Gawen, but as she reached the center of the church and glanced back at the doorway, there he was in the gloom beside the entrance. It reminded her palpably of the night she’d found him, cast up into the darkness at the base of the cliffs beyond Neadeala.
Sitting forward, Gawen fixed Rowenna with his dark eyes.
“It’s not safe to go off on your own this close to Torr Pendragon’s court,” he warned. “Take care, Rowenna Winthrop, and stay close to the rest of us from now on.”
“Odd you should care about my well-being, all of a sudden,” Rowenna said, her words holding an edge, “as you couldn’t be bothered to say anything when my brothers called me a liar and you knew better.”
“They’d hardly believe me when they don’t believe their own kin,” Gawen pointed out.
“Then you’re a coward,” Rowenna shot back. “Not speaking the truth just because it wouldn’t be heard the way it ought.”
“Did you speak your own truth before you were forced into it, though?” Gawen asked, his composure slipping. “Or did you hold it close until you couldn’t any longer? And aren’t you lying even now, letting your brothers believe this curse was your work?”
Rowenna took the few steps back to the door in an instant and sank to her knees before Gawen, everything in her on fire.
“What I do is my own business, Gawen MacArthur,” she said, low and fierce. “It’s not me who came begging for your help.”
Immediately he curbed his own sharpness, though she could still feel it in him. He might play at penitence, but Rowenna suspected neither of them were ever entirely without anger.
“I’m sorry.” The words came out mild, Gawen’s face schooled into a careful blank. “You’re right, and I’m sure you know what you’re about.”
Rowenna leaned forward, still blazing, until she was mere inches from him. Until she could smell him—sweat and salt and grave earth.
“Don’t lie to me when you’ve just been scolding me for deceit,” she said, tension singing through her and him and the very air. “I’d rather the truth from you than false kindness.”
Rowenna watched Gawen struggle. For a moment, he warred within himself, knowing he ought to maintain his feigned humility. But it was against his nature. Rowenna knew that already, and watching him give in to fire that answered her own felt like triumph.
“You want truth from me?” Gawen said. “Then here’s the truth for you. I’m not on your side, Rowenna Winthrop. Perhaps I’ll take your part when it suits, and perhaps I know more of who you are than some others do, but I’m on my own side, now and always. You’re working on behalf of your kin, and I’m working on behalf of myself and my own ends, and if either of us has to break with the other because of that, we’ll do it in a heartbeat.”
“What exactly are your own ends?” Rowenna asked for the first time, eyes narrowing as she looked him up and down. “You said you want me to find something for you, with my craft. What is it?”
